Dear Politicians| INEC will reject substitution of candidates by political parties, says Jega.

CHAIRMAN of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has urged all political parties to ensure a decent job in their primaries through internal democracy, as the commission would not accept any form of substitution after it has received the list of candidates post primaries.Jega, who spoke in Abuja yesterday while declaring open a summit with traditional rulers on the conduct of violent-free 2015 polls, accused parties and politicians of generating and inciting conflicts and violence, which might pose serious threat to the election.

He faulted the legal provision of parties submitting to INEC names of candidates who did not even contest party primaries, even as he assured that the commission was very much ready.“We are confident that the prospects of having good election in 2015 are very bright,” he said. 

“We harbour no illusion that our preparations are perfect, but we will spare no effort to ensure that as far as INEC is concerned, we are operationally prepared to deliver better elections in 2015 than what we had with the 2011 election.“

The greatest challenge and threat to 2015 general elections, as we see it in the commission, is the conduct capable of generating and inciting conflicts and violence by many critical stakeholders in the political arena. “I believe we all need to work together to ensure that those tendencies are checked, ensure that peace reigns and that politicians in particular conduct themselves with the civility and responsibility required for the success of electoral processes.”Jega regretted that the failure to amend the legal framework, especially on the conduct of party primaries, was posing another serious threat as the 2015 general election approaches, stressing that the commission has already requested the amendment from the National Assembly.

“Drawing from our experiences in the 2011 elections and other elections conducted since then, we have submitted recommendations for improvements to the legal framework, especially the Electoral Act and the Constitution, to the National Assembly,” he noted.“We submitted these recommendations about two years ago and the National Assembly has gone very far and has got to the stage called ‘reconciliation.’ We regret that it has taken time but we are still hopeful that the legal framework will be amended before the 2015 election because it will help us to improve on many areas of discrepancies.“There is an existing provision in the Electoral Act, which actually creates confusion and conflict, constraining what INEC does in terms of regulating and ensuring internal party democracy. For example, section 31 of the Electoral Act says that when a party does primaries and submits the names to INEC, INEC will not reject those names for any reason whatsoever.

“There is also section 87 of the same Electoral Act, which says that candidates in political party primaries should emerge through democratic processes. Now, both the Electoral Act and the Constitution mandated INEC to monitor primaries of political parties.”He added: “Any time the parties are conducting primaries, we will send people to monitor and prepare reports about what transpired there and see whether they complied with the party constitution, electoral act and constitutional provisions.“However, in 2011, we had situations where we will send monitors that returned with reports, detailing who emerged in the party primaries through democratic means but the names the party secretariats forwarded as nominations to INEC were totally different.“Some of them, for example, would ignore the candidate that emerged and pick the candidate who finished third; there are instances they would even ignore the entire list and send an entirely different person who did not participate in the party primaries.