The performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the conduct of the general elections earlier this year in the country is still under scrutiny, months after the results were announced and winners sworn in. To some, particularly those, who lost in their bid to get elected, INEC did not do well, while it was praises for the electoral umpire from winners. In Kwara State, there were knocks and kudos for INEC from both the winners and losers. In this interview with The Nigerian Xpress correspondent, WOLE ADEDEJI in Ilorin, the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, Mallam Garba Attahiru Madami, spoke on the performance of his team during the elections. He also spoke on what the Commission will be doing between now and 2023 since there would be no election to conduct between now and then.
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IIt is almost six months now that the 2019 general elections were conducted by your commission in Kwara State. How do you feel about it?
First of all, let me inform you that it is precisely one year today that I resumed work as the Resident Electoral Commission here in Kwara State. Your coming is coincidental and I think it is ordained by God. We need to thank Almighty God that we are lucky to have done our ultimate best and God granted us the grace to succeed in a manner that had never been done before. In fact, it is a general opinion here that we have not only come to make the difference, but we have also come to set the pace. Kwara is rated second, coming after Jigawa State that does not have post election litigation against INEC over that election. After the election, I went to the Artemis Specialist Hospital, India, for a major spinal injury operation. I thank God that the operation was successful and I have since come back.
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Yes, but taking a cursory look at the election that INEC in Kwara conducted, what can you say about it?
Well, when I came back, I made copies of questionnaires and gave to my staff. They were 383 in all. Both the most junior up to the management staff and I asked them to assess me so that I can know how I fared in my performance so that I can particularly know my areas of weakness and the areas of my strength. This is akin to the one once done by the National Chairman of INEC, Professor Yakubu Mammud, who invited Electoral Officers (EOs) in all the 774 local government areas of the country, asking them to do an appraisal of the Commission to know what in the past had been done wrong and which one was not quite done right. The same was done in the states and the local governments. This was done preparatory to the general elections. In the same spirit, that was the first thing I did when I came fresh to Kwara State. I opened a suggestion box and asked my staff to drop their observations there. They were not to put their names there so that there would not be any fear in freely expressing their minds on issues. After that, I held a meeting with both my management and other members of staff and we came up with a work plan that would keep us busy from now till 2023. This was where we prepared a post election calendar for ourselves.
And what does this calendar contain?
Yes, lest I forget, before the general elections we engaged in training and retraining of staff. The meeting I held earlier also included the Electoral Officers (EOs) from the local government areas. This is the tempo we want to maintain and continue to do for all those that would be involved in elections. I am committed to do all it will take to make a mark, a positive mark here in Kwara State and that is my resolve the moment I took up the appointment. That is what I continue to strive to do till the time I will leave. Now, there would be an All Stakeholders’ Forum made up of the security agencies, civil society organisations, political parties, the media and the women societies. The Kwara North zone has a very large land mass and some other issues which we have observed with a view to addressing them before the next general elections. We will embark on aggressive voters’ education programmes. This time around, we are making the schools the centre point. That is, the primary, secondary and at the tertiary levels for a good voters’ education. In schools, we plan to organise debate and quiz competitions which would begin from the local areas to the local government levels and then to the state. Prizes would be won in all these levels before the grand finale at the state level. This and more are what we will do to get people prepared for the 2023 general elections. Also, we will get dummy Card Reader Machines with which we will train the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, members and other prospective ad-hoc staff as well as our staff on how to handle the machines during the election proper. There is no doubt that Card Reader Machines malfunctioning on the day of elections could be a serious problem. In all, when l came, I saw that registered voters in Kwara State were grossly not enough and I decided to address that. When I started, the figure of registered voters was far below one million but it began to increase with our efforts and strategies. At the end, we recorded 1.4 million registered voters for the elections. My target towards 2023 therefore is to clock two million registered voters to participate in the general elections.
Sorry to take you back. When you came to Kwara about a year ago, were you confronted with any major problem; what happened?
Thank you. You see when I came, I inherited an INEC image problem simply because of a misconception of the populace based on an immediate past election that was not conducted by INEC, which the people ignorantly would not understand. So, they had lost interest in elections and that was transferred to INEC. The story is, I came shortly after the Kwara State Independent Electoral Commission, KWSIEC, conducted election into the 16 local government councils in the state and there were lots of complaints. The situation was so bad that the people had concluded that elections in Kwara State would always go the same way any day and a particular set of people had mastered the game of manipulating elections, which would always swing in their favour. Besides, I think the people did not know the difference between INEC and KWSIEC. To change their perception, therefore, was really a big task and I quickly realised that I needed to do something about it quickly. I told myself that I was going to do it and to the glory of God, not only I did it, but also all of us here in INEC, Kwara State did it. The credit goes to all of us.
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Aside from this, did you also observe anything you felt shouldn’t be?
Women participation in politics in the last election here in Kwara State was bad. In fact, it was zero. You see, I have feelings for the female gender and I always feel their rights should not be denied them. Whether anybody or some people denied them participation this time or not, I don’t know. But just that they did not participate. Can you imagine that no single woman was elected into office in the last elections? No woman in the Senate, no woman in the House of Representatives and the only one elected into the House of Assembly was removed by the Supreme Court. This is an area we are looking at in readiness for 2023. Our sensitisation drive will include this. We will involve various women organisations and many more stakeholders in this respect. In addition, I am concerned about the welfare of my staff. I have drawn up my plan as from now. We will do training and retraining and assist them to improve on their education. If you have ND, go for your HND, If you have Bachelors Degree, go for Masters Degree, if you have Masters Degree, go for your PhD. I also plan to document the events of 2019 elections that we conducted in Kwara State and we are doing that already. A special publication is in the mill. It will be published and launched in October. Proceeds from this launching will be substantially channeled to this welfare programme for the staff.
What is your last word?
I thank God for the success that we recorded in the conduct of the 2019 general elections. People thought it could never happen here because to them, certain category of people cannot be defeated in elections. This people they thought had over the years mastered how to manipulate but we adhered strictly to the rules of the game and God helped us. We were able to surmount that problem, prove the mighty ones wrong. The exercise came smoothly and ended successfully.