The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said that it has begun implementing some of the recommendations made by stakeholders for the 2023 general elections.
INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu made the remarks during the commission’s first meeting with the new European Union Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Gautier Mignot, in Abuja on Tuesday.
He stated that INEC had already begun work on the evaluation of its planning tools, such as the Strategic Plan and the Election Project Plan, for future elections.
Yakubu stated that since the 2023 general elections, the commission has received reports from many of the 206 national and foreign groups, as well as international organisations accredited to observe the elections.
He stated that stakeholders, including the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM), had issued a total of 23 suggestions, eight of which required action by the commission.
According to Yakubu, 15 of the suggestions required action by the government, judiciary, legislature, and other stakeholders, including civil society organizations, the media, faith-based organizations, and political parties.
“The eight specific recommendations for INEC address the dissemination of the commission’s election regulations and guidelines, election duty staff training, and the deployment of electoral technology.”
“Other topics include the result management process, continuous voter registration, voter list cleaning, engagement of marginalized groups in the electoral process, and voting by internally displaced persons (IDPs).
“For our part, the commission conducted a detailed internal and external evaluation of the 2023 general elections, with input from our own officials and stakeholders across the board.
“We completed a 524-page main report and a 74-page review report with 142 suggestions. “The two reports have already been uploaded to our website,” he stated.
The INEC chairman stated that the commission had already begun implementing portions of the proposals that required just administrative action.
“For instance, in some of the off-cycle, re-run, and bye-elections conducted since the general elections, there has been an improvement in the quality of training for ad hoc staff, including the deployment of more BVAS machines for this purpose,” according to him.
Yakubu also emphasized the significant improvement in the functionality of BVAS machines for voter accreditation that use fingerprint or facial authentication.
