The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, displayed mountain-high confidence when he said, Friday, that the 2023 general election will be the best ever conducted in Nigeria.

He premised his confidence on the tenets of the Electoral Act and the efforts made by INEC especially with the deployment of technology from voter registration to voter accreditation, actual voting and transmission of result.

He gave the assurance when he engaged members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) at their forum in Lagos, adding a clincher: “Apart from being free, fair, transparent and credible, next year’s election will have an additional feature, it will be verifiable,” he stressed in obvious reference to the electronic transmission of result as spelt out in the Electoral Act.

The INEC Chair dismissed the claim by the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), which alleged through its spokesman, Ikenga Ugochinyere, of the existence of fictitious names in the INEC voter register.

Ugochinyere had displayed extracts from the national voters register which it claimed were part of at least ten million fake registrations done by one of the political parties.

“The names were sourced from both within and outside Nigeria including some African countries such as Ghana, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Togo, Guinea, Gambia and countries outside Africa including Jamaica, Brazil and New Zealand,” he claimed as he displayed a purported register of voters at a press conference.

But Prof. Yakubu dismissed the claim as total falsehood, wondering where they got the so-called register of voters when INEC is still cleaning up the register and therefore does not have any valid voter register at the moment.

The INEC chairman confirmed that no fewer than 97 million voters had been captured in the INEC database, stressing that this number is huge compared to the volume of voter registers in other countries in the ECOWAS sub-region.

He described the Nigerian election as huge in comparison to elections in other parts of Africa. He said the cumulative voter register of the other 14 countries in West Africa stands at about 70 million, far short of the number in Nigeria.

On the cost of election, the INEC Chair said that at $9 per voter, Nigeria is not among nations with highest cost of election.

INEC budget for 2023 election is N305 billion, but, according to Yakubu, this is only 1.8 per cent of the federal budget for the year which is lower than the value in many other African countries, singling out the recent Kenya election as the most expensive in Africa.

On the allegation that there was a secret court action to stop the use of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, in the 2023 general elections, the INEC Chair said the commission was yet to be served any court paper to that effect. But he was quick to add that should such case come up and the commission served, there is enough legal leverage in the Electoral Act to nullify any such move.

To buttress the hugeness of elections in Nigeria, he said no fewer than 1.4 million personnel (adhoc and regular staff) would be needed to conduct the 2023 elections in which 18 political parties would be participating.

The President of the Guild, Mr Mustapha Isah in his remarks decried the spectre of vote-buying, warning that if not checked, it has the capacity to undermine the credibility of the election.

He said: “Vote buying has become a threat to our democracy. The Guild sees it as one of the manifestations of the weaponization of poverty in the land.   Poverty could make some Nigerians to offer their votes for sale for a paltry sum, not minding the devastating consequences on good governance. Why do politicians buy votes now? The answer is simple. Votes are beginning to count due to the reforms introduced by INEC.

“It’s obvious that Nigerians are now more confident in the electoral process. The registration of  10. 48 million new voters ahead of the 2023 polls is another testimony to this.”

Isah said that the confidence of Nigerians in INEC  was greatly boosted with the recent conduct of the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections. He urged INEC to repeat the same feat.

He appealed to INEC: “Nigerians want a repeat or  an  improvement in the 2023 polls. Please, don’t disappoint them.  I’m happy that the commission has maintained its position that electronic transmission of results has come to stay. The Guild is with you on this. We are prepared to fight any attempt to take Nigeria back to the dark days of writing election results in hotels and beer parlours. The people’s will must prevail at all times.”

But he warned that desperate Nigerian politicians can go to any length to manipulate the elections.

“They might try hacking your systems to influence the results.  The Guild calls on the commission to take serious steps to safeguard your systems and prevent hackers from doing any damage.”