Nigeria’s Election Management System Is Chaotic – Jiti Ogunye

A legal practitioner, Mr Jiti Ogunye, has faulted the manner in which elections are being managed in the country.

He noted that the last two general elections conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were accompanied by a lot of challenges.

Ogunye, who was a guest on Channels Television’s special end of the year programme, 2019 End Of A Decade, on Tuesday decried the postponement of the elections.

He said, “Generally, I think we will all agree that our election management system is chaotic. Our country is diverse, it is big.

“People have pointed to India as the biggest democracy on earth that they conducted election in a business-like manner without much violence and all that; so, why can’t Nigeria do so?”

“It is still very likely that even with the unfortunate postponement we had in 2015 and the one that we had this year; in the future, it is still possible that we are going to have that kind of problem,” the lawyer added.

He, however, called on the government to rise up to its responsibility and address the many challenges facing threatening the conduct of elections.

Ogunye proposed the adoption of a digital system to conduct elections, stressing that this would serve as a quick fix to some of the problems.

According to him, going digital will immediately eliminate the issue of ballot box snatching and make the conduct of elections cheaper and less cumbersome.

The lawyer said, “The point is that from what we can see, we will have to keep fit with the possibility of digitising our electoral system to solve many of the problems that we encounter while conducting an election.”

He listed some of the challenges to include logistics, violence, electoral malpractices and sharp practices by electoral officials and politicians among others.