What INEC Must Learn From Kenya Elections – Osita Chidoka

Osita Chidoka, a former minister of aviation, has emphasized what he called “urgent lessons” that the Independent National Electoral Commission must learn from the Kenyan elections as Kenya moves closer on Monday to learning the results of its closely contested presidential election after days of anxious waiting.

In a post headlined “Kenya Presidential Election: Urgent Lessons for INEC,” Chidoka remarked that the delay in Kenya’s compilation of election results, which was taking up to six days, did not bode well for Nigeria. Chidoka made the comment on his Facebook page on Monday morning.

He said, “As of 6 am Nigerian time the Kenya Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission had tallied results from 253 out of 291 constituencies, Ruto is leading with 51.18% of the votes cast while Raila Odinga is at 48.14%. The winner needs 50% plus one vote to coast home. With 38 constituencies to go, the IEBC will likely announce the final result by midday today.”

Chidoka, who is also a former Corps Marshal and Chief Executive of the Federal Road Safety Corps, said the upload of results from polling units in Nigeria was an excellent innovation but the country needs to go further and upload the following: Form EC 8B – the ward collation results from the Residential Areas and Form EC 8C – the Local Government collation results.

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“Upload the collated results for the State House of Assembly, House of Representatives and Senate election after collation and declaration.

“Upload the form EC 8D – state collation results as signed by party agents before proceeding to Abuja,” he added.

“The delay in Kenya where all the poll stations results were online since August 11, and collation has taken about six days will not augur well for Nigeria,” he said.

He noted that INEC was usually faster than the IEBC but “we are now confronted with a new system where parties can tabulate results from INEC uploads.

“To improve transparency, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System backend should automatically collate the Polling Unit results for the ward level and print copies for validation and signing by ward agents of the political parties.”

Chidoka noted that this would “ensure that the result at the backend of the BVAS is consistent with the result on the BVAS tablets.”

“This is key for post-election issues,” he revealed.