State election: PAACA urges reform, not scrapping of SIECs

The Peering Advocacy and Advancement Center in Africa (PAACA) has cautioned against calls to abolish State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), instead advocating for reforms to strengthen their autonomy and independence.

In a statement mave available to newsmen, Thursday in Abuja, PAACA expressed concerns that replacing SIECs with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or a federal organization would undermine state autonomy and imperil the federal system.

In the statement signed by Ezenwa Nwagu, the PAACA Executive Director, PAACA acknowledged that SIECs have failed to live up to expectations due to non-functional legal systems, inadequate financing, and restricted powers.

However, the advocacy group argued that scrapping SIECs would concentrate power in the federal government, weakening state autonomy and violating the Constitution’s fundamental right to free and fair elections.

Instead, PAACA proposed reforms to address the fundamental concerns.

He said, “This call could have a negative impact on INEC. An already overburdened INEC will be strained by this idea, leading to ill-run local elections. INEC is responsible for a plethora of tasks, including off-cycle governorship elections, bye-elections, and rerun elections. Throughout the election cycle, the commission is continuously engaged in the registration and oversight of political parties, voter registration, the creation of election guidelines and materials, and the nomination of candidates. The Commission would be put under an additional burden if it is also tasked with organising local government elections. This could result in decreased efficacy in overseeing electoral procedures and inefficiencies in administration. The Constitution’s fundamental right to free and fair elections would be violated by this onerous duty, which would also jeopardise election integrity.

As a county, we should consider addressing the aforementioned fundamental concerns instead of doing away with SIECs. Here are a few avenues to pursue to remedy these issues:

Strengthen the SIECs’ autonomy and independence: To remain independent, the SIECs’ financial independence needs to be guaranteed. This can be accomplished by moving SIECs’ funding to a first-line charge, as done with INEC. As a result, SIECs will become financially and administratively independent. Furthermore, it will lead to periodic or regular elections at the local level.

Review the process of appointments into SIECs: The power to appoint the Chairperson and members of SIECs should be reviewed. We recommend that the appointment process should be reviewed to a process of establishing an ad-hoc committee for the sole purpose of the appointment of members of the commission. The committee should comprise diverse stakeholders such as personnel of security agencies (the police), CSOs, and other relevant stakeholder groups. The ad-hoc committee should be responsible for the nomination of members of the commission and the confirmation will be by the state assembly.

Introduce timelines for appointment in SIECs: The National Assembly should amend the Constitution to introduce timelines for appointing the members of the boards of SIECs. To avoid delaying the formation of the commissions’ boards. This timeline can be extended to accommodate the establishment of the proposed appointing ad-hoc committee for boards of SIECs.

Compel State Assemblies to amend state electoral laws: To preserve the integrity of local government elections, the National Assembly included a clause governing LGA election procedures in the 2022 Electoral Act. The Act required SIECs to hold local elections according to the guidelines provided in the 2022 Electoral Act.

We therefore call on the National Assembly and the Executive arm of government to address these issues, through a legal reform that will strengthen SIECs.