Election Law bulletin: The 2025 Bye-Elections in View – P. D. Pius Esq

By P. D. Pius, Esq

Tomorrow, the 16th of August 2025, INEC will be conducting bye-elections. The bye-elections will cut across 16 states of the federation: 2 senatorial, 5 federal houses of representatives and 9 state assemblies. One will be in my Taraba State.

We saw the glitch that greeted the 2023 elections and the lessons learnt. However, one important lesson from this bye-election is the inability of some opposition political parties to participate in the process due to internal crises. For instance, the Labour Party and the SDP, initially seen to be budding or emerging strong opposition, have within 2 years run deep into crisis and are unable to even feature candidates in the bye-elections.

There is virtually little or no internal democracy in most of the political parties in Nigeria. Decisions taken at the political party level are mostly the whims and caprices of the leader of the party and not what the members want. Unfortunately, these political parties frame their constitutions in such a way that says a member cannot go to court to challenge the decision of the political party or, better still, the decision of the leader of the party. This renders members helpless and makes the court toothless. For instance, on the Labour Party leadership dispute, the Supreme Court could only say, ‘Go and resolve it within yourself, as we have no power to determine who is the rightful National Chairman.’ A similar decision was rendered on the PDP National Secretary issue. We need electoral reforms to give powers to the court to finally resolve this kind of political party leadership tussle.

We all know that unless there is a dispute resolution mechanism outside the control of the political parties, they will never be transparent or democratic in internal decision-making processes. Thus, the most needed electoral reform is on internal democracy in political parties and not the hullabaloo about the use of technology in elections by INEC. Section 77(c) on party membership also needs to be made mandatory. Politicians should stop confusing us; let’s know where exactly they are. Either PDP or APC or ADC or Labour Party, etc. Jumping political parties within one circle of elections should be prohibited and penalised with disqualification.

Be that as it may, the current Electoral Act 2022 has adequate provisions on the use of technology in elections. All of the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Electoral Acts had specifically prohibited the use of technology in voting in previous elections. However, the 2022 Electoral Act was clear on the use of a card reader device or any electronic device for accreditation and empowers INEC to use technology in voting, results collation and transmission.

What we also desperately need is a full understanding of the Electoral Act 2022 and application of the same. Political parties, election officials, lawyers and judges need to fully digest and understand the Electoral Act 2022 in comparison with the previous Electoral Acts. This will make us realise that the provisions are adequate for the use of technology. In fact, the only means of accreditation provided in the current Electoral Act is by use of technology. It therefore does not tally when courts decide that to prove a lack of accreditation or partial accreditation that was done with technology, you will need to call eyewitnesses.

Technology does not need an eyewitness to confirm the record kept by a technological device. We need training to understand how the technology works and stop looking for eyewitnesses when the technology has all the records. Irrespective of glitches or no glitches, technology always has records kept. Maybe there is a need to advance this argument before the court for a correct interpretation of the Electoral Act 2022.

Thus, the bye-elections that will be held tomorrow should strictly be by the use of the technological device of either a card reader or a BVAS in terms of the accreditation of voters. Any voter or vote that is not authenticated by these technological devices is invalid and should not be counted. Let actual votes count. Any infractions should be resisted by political party agents. Agents must be properly trained on the use of this technology to enable them to protect the votes of their political parties.

May the best man win!

P. D. Pius Esq.,
Abuja, Nigeria
piusdanba@gmail.com
www.pdpiusandassociates.com

Source: BarristerNG