Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Kunle Adegoke, has said Nigeria remains “miles away” from achieving truly free and fair elections despite recent reforms to improve transparency in the electoral process.
Speaking during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Wednesday, Adegoke acknowledged that while the country’s elections have seen gradual improvement over the years, the system is still plagued by deep-rooted challenges that undermine credibility.
He noted that appointing the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is not the core issue affecting Nigeria’s elections, as some have said, arguing instead that the problem lies in the nation’s weak institutional culture and disregard for the rule of law.
“Our electoral process has a lot of challenges and there is no doubt about it that we still have miles to cover in order to be ranked as organising free and fair elections. But I do not think that the selection of the INEC chairman is the albatross afflicting our electoral process,” he said.
He, however, acknowledged progress in recent years through electoral innovations and civic engagement, which have reduced the scale of electoral malpractice, even as significant loopholes remain.
“In the past there used to be such massive rigging that everybody would know that things were really amiss, but in recent times with the innovations that have been introduced into the electoral acts and steps that have been taken by political actors and non political actors monitoring process and others, we’ve been able to safeguard the process to a large extent there are still challenges bedeviling the electoral process in Nigeria and one cannot deny that.”
Melissa Enoch
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