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Over the past few
days, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has appeared
to be working very hard to deliver elections that will not disappoint
Nigerians as terribly as the cancelled elections of April 2.

For one, there has
been a series of engagements with the media and civil society
organisations over the past week, seeking to explain the events that
led to the cancellation, the challenges to the process that remain with
logistics, vendors and personnel, and the commission has admirably
worked on a transparent process that can lead to a broad-based network
of support on Saturday.

Yesterday, the
commission showed its command of the situation by announcing the
postponement of the scheduled legislative elections in 13.76 per cent
of 109 senatorial districts and 13.33 per cent of 360 federal
constituencies, In Ebonyi North, Ekiti North and South, Sokoto North
and others, elections have been postponed to April 26.

The challenge,
after the last cancellation, isn’t just free and fair elections – the
challenges now are functional elections that don’t end up doing
themselves in by a paucity of project management efficiency.

A few questions
have been identified by many sections of the media and civil society
that bear repeating as we move into tomorrow.

One is the pesky
matter of INEC’s saboteur-vendors: it is worrying that INEC did not
immediately identify the printer vendors concerned, while it went ahead
to lavishly blame same. Government agencies have a duty towards
transparency especially one so sensitive. Who is this vendor and what
are the steps taken to ensure that the vendor does not get away with
this? Is there a reason why this information has not been made public?
Accountability, after all, must follow transparency.

But beyond that is
the all-important issue of the Voter Register. Considering the fact
that many names have been omitted from the accredited list of voters,
what measures have been put in place to rectify this problem in the
polling units across the country – and avoid creating a situation where
legitimate voters are unable to vote? How, also, would independent
observers be able to verify voters?

Then there are
ballot papers that came deformed in many parts. This included omitted
candidates and omitted party logos. Has INEC provided a roadmap to
engaging this problem? If it has, what exactly has been done to assure
Nigerians before the elections – as this is clearly an invitation to
contentious post-election litigation?

Communication is
also another issue. INEC – despite its engagement with civil society
groups – has been unable to evolve a system to make use of voters’
contact details, especially phones to be able to communicate with
Nigerians efficiently or for that matter with polling officials. Is it
impossible for this to have been corrected in the past week?

Tied to
communication, we wonder if INEC has worked out a collaboration with
telecom regulators to ensure that, as services like ReVoDa the
Ushahidi-based ReclaimNaija.net involved in citizen reporting are
mobile-phone based, telecoms providers are able to ensure stable
service to help prevent and pre-empt rigging and violence. A failure to
do this at this time shows that INEC has yet to take advantage of the
immense human and other resources that it has ready access to.

It is also a shame
that youth corps members’ welfare is still an issue – including
non-payment or inadequate payment of allowances and, in cases, a
complete inability to see that the welfare and conduct of these young
people is directly related to polling unit transparency.

And what about
security? There has been no sophisticated system, as far as we can see,
to ensure security different from elections before this. Flooding the
streets with police officers – many of whom are already beholden to the
ruling parties in their states – is not enough. While security belongs
with the police, it is not too much to expect that INEC build a synergy
with the force to ensure that snatching of ballot boxes, intimidation
of youth corps officials and other ways of promoting insecurity are
avoided and engaged.

These are answers that INEC is yet to provide effectively while it
continues to assure of its capacity to run these elections tomorrow and
over the next few weeks. We are very uncomfortable with this reality,
but there is almost nothing that can be done but to trust that Mr. Jega
understands the challenges ahead of him and the consequence of failure.
The stakes are now too high for INEC – another failure will be
unacceptable.