By Ejimofor Boni Agbachi

Sir: With the 2027 elections looming, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is in the eye of the storm with a huge burden of public distrust to discharge.

The public distrust started with the flawed 2007 elections under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, with his infamous declaration that the election was “a do or die affair” and which he went ahead to prosecute as warfare with all guns blazing.

The election became a national disgrace characterised by massive irregularities in the form of falsification of election results, allocation of votes, over voting,voter intimidation, ballot box stuffing and other malpractice, including widespread electoral violence that left over 200 people dead.

All through the farce, INEC was institutionally an active accessory to rigging (in all ramifications of the process), working in unholy alliance with politicians, government officials, progue elements in security agencies to ensure a pre-determined outcome.

Umaru Yar’Adua, the candidate of PDP was declared “winner” by 70% of the votes (the highest in the history of presidential poll in the country). He was so embarassed by his “victory” that he publicly admitted that he was a product of an electoral traversty and famously set up the Justice Uwais Commission on Electoral Reforms.

The election was so fraudulent that the European Union Election observers described it as “the worst they had ever seen anywhere in the world.” For the country, it remains one of the darkest chapters in our democratic evolution and shattered (in no small measure) public confidence in the electoral commission.

As public trust in INEC waned, a sense of cynicism pervaded the polity in which elections are perceived to be won only by rigging. Those who genuinely lost election claim they won but were rigged out while those who won have rigged their way to victory. With INEC seen as a compromised institution that cannot be trusted our elections became one of the most disputed and litigated polls in the world.

From 2011 to date the commission has been working hard to improve the integrity of the electoral process and pull herself out of the abyss of public odium after her dismal outing in the blighted 2007 elections. It has made some incremental progress. This progress has continued with her credible performance in the recent off-cycle and bye elections but it has not been able to erase completely the trust deficit to earn the commission the required public trust as an umpire.

Elections are the life line of our democratic dispensation and must be seen to be free, fair and credible to earn the trust and buy-in of the people for our nascent democracy to make the desired progress.

INEC must see the 2027 elections as an opportunity to lay down a marker by conducting a credible poll that ticks all the boxes of international standard for electoral democracy and banish forever the ghost of election malpractice in the country. The commission should enthrone a new culture in which both the winner and the loser will accept the outcome as the true reflection of the will of the electorate in similarity with other advanced democracies.

This goal is not unachievable; all it requires is for the commission to address vulnerabilities that are concomitant with polling by getting the priorities right as it ramps up her preparations for the elections.

Election is 80% logistics and a hitch-free election is anchored on the successful management of the logistics as a critical and complex component of the whole gamut of election administration. The sole aim is to optimize distribution efficiency of polling materials in time for the commencement of electoral proceedings in all the designated polling units. The credibility of the process starts with the commencement of polling proceedings timously in accordance with polling guidelines.

Delays and late take off of polling activities for whatever reasons are red flags, inexcusable and pose great risk to the integrity of the process as they are seen as an attempt to undermine and sabotage the election in favour of a candidate.

Contestation for political power carries high stakes where every “error” or “mistake” has implications for electoral fortunes of the candidates and is viewed with deep suspicion and hardly countenanced, no matter how innocuous it may seem.

INEC must therefore spare no effort to get a handle on the logistics operation of moving materials along with polling officials to more than 176,000 polling units across a vast territory of difficult terrains and remote locations spanning nearly a million square kilometers simultaneously.

This is a multi-layered operation and a logistical nightmare bound to demand meticulous planning, large scale deployment of transportation resources, security operations, emergency services, back-end infrastructure and precision execution.

It requires the commission to work in synergy with logistics professionals, security agencies and government agencies with vast experience in logistic operations. And if the commission does pull it off (and I so much hope so), it has acquitted herself and is home and dry as far as the conduct of the 2027 elections are concerned.

INEC should get ready to bask in the sunshine of a national adulation and usher in a new era of undiluted public trust in the institution.

Ejimofor Boni Agbachi is a public affairs analyst based in Aberdeen, Scotland. +447519297527.