Ahead of #NigeriaDecides2023, INEC must close its credibility gap, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

INEC President, Professor Mahmood Yakubu

Faced with these facts, it is unjustified to consider the inability of the CENI to organize these polls for these parliamentary recesses as a failure. On the contrary, it seems both voluntary and deliberate and has important consequences for the credibility of the Commission. The losers are not only the people of the affected constituencies, but also the Nigerian people who have a right to believe that their electoral arbiter should take public investment in their institutional credibility seriously.

Seven days after emerging as president of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on March 26, Abdullahi Adamu resigned from the Senate, where he had represented residents of the Nasarawa West senatorial area since 2011. Senate Ahmad Lawan read his resignation letter on the Senate floor on April 12.

Senator Adamu's resignation took effect 330 days before the date of the 2023 presidential election.

Section 76(2) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria empowers the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to hold a by-election to fill such a vacancy within 30 to 90 days from the date of the vacancy. Yet nearly 190 days after Senator Adamu's resignation, the CENI has not seen fit to hold an election for his replacement or explain its failure or refusal to comply with this important constitutional obligation.

The failure or refusal of INEC to undertake the process required to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Senator Adamu deprives the people of Nasarawa West of their right to be represented in the Senate of Assembly national. They are not the only ones in this position.

At the same APC convention in March, in which Adamu became president, another senator, Abubakar Kyari, representing Borno North in northeast Nigeria, was elected Senator Adamu's deputy. Like Adamu, Kyari, through a separate communication to the President of the Senate, also resigned his seat effective April 1. Like Adamu residents in Nasarawa West, Kyari residents in Borno North are also without representation in the National Assembly since the first day of the second quarter of 2022.

A month before the party chose Senators Adamu and Kyari to lead the APC, Hassan Muhammadu Nasiha Gusau, representing Zamfara Central also in the Senate, was sworn in on February 23 as deputy state governor . His seat in the Senate therefore became vacant under Article 68(1)(d) of the 1999 Constitution, which specifically requires that a member of the National Assembly...