April 24, (THEWILL) – The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in charge of Benue State, Professor Sam Egwu, has advocated institutional reforms, attitudinal change and key actors towards the conduct of general elections in Nigeria.
Professor Egwu, who featured on Radio Benue personality programme “Vied Point”, noted that such reforms should focus on certain geographic indices, behaviour of key actors and the Independent National Electoral Commission’s internal arrangement in future elections in the country.
He stressed the need to screen INEC data and merge it with that of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), to maintain integrity in the electoral system.
According to the REC, the commission should decentralise some of its operations to reflect the reality of some localities with peculiar challenges if some problems associated with election management in the country has to be addressed.
He pointed out that the partnership with Youth Corp members in the conduct of elections need to be expanded, to cover other Nigerians with maturity and experience.
“Politicians easily manipulate some of the Corp members to compromise. There is also the need to involve the Nigerian Air Force in the handling of logistics, especially distribution of electoral materials across the country.”
On the failure by INEC to conduct the Governorship election in Kwande local Government area, Prof. Egwu blamed the development to some stakeholders from the area, whom he said insisted that both the Governorship and House of assembly polls must be done on the same day.
He explained that the printing mixed up in the ballot papers was for Kwande West and Kwande East constituencies and not for governorship, he commended Benue people for the high-level of maturity exhibited during and after the general elections in the state.
