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General elections in Nigeria like conducting polls for West Africa, says Yakubu 

By Sodiq Omolaoye, Abuja
16 January 2022   |   2:54 am
The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has underscored the huge responsibilities involved in conducting elections in Nigeria

Hon. Chairman INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu

The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has underscored the huge responsibilities involved in conducting elections in Nigeria, stating that conducting general elections in Nigeria is akin to holding one for the entire West Africa region.

The INEC chairman stated this when the Director-General, Bureau for Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dasuki Ibrahim Arabi, led a team on a courtesy visit to the INEC Headquarters, Abuja. 

In a statement, yesterday, Yakubu noted that there are very few agencies in Nigeria like INEC, considering the extensive tasks the Commission performs.

According to him: “This is the only agency in Nigeria that is saddled with the constitutional responsibility of doing so much for elections and democracy. We are doing more than managing elections; we are more or less managing the entire democracy. 

“Some of the responsibilities that we perform are actually responsibilities that so many other agencies in other countries perform. But here we do everything. The size and complexities of the country provides the context of what we do. The number of registered voters in the other 14 countries in the West African sub-region put together is 11 million less than the number of registered voters in Nigeria. So, anytime we conduct elections, it is like conducting elections for the whole of West Africa.”

Yakubu expressed the Commission’s readiness to collaborate with other agencies including the Bureau to deepen democracy and improve the electoral process.

Speaking earlier, Arabi commended the INEC for doing a lot in terms of electoral reforms, adding that the commission stood out among leading agencies in terms of reforms.

 
Noting that the Bureau had been monitoring what the commission is doing, Arabi added: “After the 2015 general elections, we produced a book, “Lessons of Nigerian Elections 1923-2015”, but the attention and the emphasis were on 2015 elections, where we saw something dramatic, where a sitting government lost the election and peacefully handed over to a new government.

“We think it is important that we celebrate public servants, and all of you that handled the elections that brought us to where we are. We want to collaborate with you; we want to know what you are doing and we want to emphasise to INEC that it is important to update us on all your reforms so that we will be able to capture them in our monitoring and evaluation framework and in the various publications we are producing.”

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