Ethiopia, Malawi to use INEC policies for local elections – Yakubu

Ethiopian and Malawian electoral bodies are considering deploying some aspects of the tool adopted by Nigeria’s election umpire to manage their local elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission has saI’d.

INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said this on Friday after declaring open a retreat to review the operationalisation structure of the Election Monitoring and Support Centre (EMSC), in Keffi, Nasarawa State.

The event, organised by INEC and the European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES), was part of activities to ensure the success of the 2023 General Elections and deepen the nation’s democracy.

According to him, the EMSC may well be another contribution of INEC, and indeed Nigeria, to election management in the world.

Yakubu, who said that the EMSC had become a vital tool in the monitoring, implementation and management of Nigeria’s electoral plans and activities, said that when the commission was first inaugurated in November 2015, its resolve was to consolidate on the gains of the last commission (2010-2015) in building systems for the continuous and effective management of the electoral process.

“The continuous search for innovative and better systems for the management of our electoral process crystalized into the 2017-2021 Strategic Plan (SP)/Strategic Programme of Action (SPA), the 2019 Election Project Plan (EPP) as well as the EMSC.

“Consequently, the commission has, over the years, continuously expanded the frontiers of electoral management and governance by introducing innovations and knowledge-driven systems. The EMSC is one such innovation,” Yakubu said.

He also said that the EMSC, as an electoral early-warning, monitoring, implementation and management tool, relying on field offices and personnel across the 36 states and the FCT, alerts the commission to the challenges, identifies electoral risks/threats and provides real-time information on the status of an election.

He said that, in doing so, the EMSC makes available to the commission the necessary information in making real-time interventions to avert or mitigate potential risks or threats to an election.

“The EMSC has greatly helped the commission in managing the electoral process.

“As a testimony to its robustness as an election management tool, many countries in the West African Region and beyond have shown interest in studying and adopting the system for their use.

“The Ethiopian and Malawi Electoral Commissions are already considering the deployment of some aspects of the tool in the management of their elections.

“The EMSC may well be another contribution of INEC (and indeed Nigeria) to election management in the world,” he added.