By Felix Khanoba
Prominent pro-democracy think-tank, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), says it uncovered some major factors hindering Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) performance in the conduct of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections in the country.
The non-governmental intellectual group said there is relative improvement in the conduct of this year’s general elections when compared to that of 2019, following the deployment of technology in the exercise.
It, however, said the problem facing INEC in the conduct of elections is not only institutional but also infrastructural.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja on Sunday, the chairman of CDD Election Analysis Centre, Professor Jinadu Adele, listed some of the major factors that hindered INEC’s performance as ranging from infrastructural deficits to logistic hindrances.
According to Jinadu, despite the massive improvement in INEC’s technological tendencies, other institutional malfeasances are cowing the performance of the commission in the conduct of the ongoing elections.
He listed the factors to include poor functionality of the BVAS and the late arrival of INEC officials and other election materials as symptoms of Nigeria’s infrastructural decadence and underdevelopment tendencies.
The CDD EAC boss added that poverty, topographical challenges, insecurity, vote-buying and other electoral malpractices also contributed as major hindrances to ensuring seamless elections.
Jinadu, however, commended INEC, saying it performed well despite the challenges.
“Infrastructure, logistics, and the difficult terrain caused challenges to INEC in its delivery, impacting the early start of the election and the behaviour of people employed by INEC.
“By and large, INEC has done well in this electoral process but there are still some problems, related to the infrastructural issues of the country,” Jinadu said.
On the alleged issue of being too soft on INEC in assessing the electoral body performance, Jinadu dismissed such insinuation, saying CDD as a non-partisan pro-democracy body would only hinged its reports based on verifiable feedbacks from the field not on sentiments.
He, however, said the observed lapses which are not palatable to an ideal electoral process will be fully captured for necessary action.
