Govt agencies must synergise on information processing, management, dissemination-Kunnu

Political parties, support groups and many citizens of the country are all preparing for the 2023 elections with campaigns, PVC’s collection all underway.

But the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has lamented the increasing wave of violence and insecurity gearing up to the elections. They expressed fears that if this is not check mated, it may lead to the cancellation or postponement of the forthcoming polls.

On the other hand, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed speaking on behalf of the federal government, assured the country and Nigerians that there’s no cause for alarm, nothing to fear, and everything is going as planned.

Lecturer, Political Analyst Adeniyi Kunnu speaking on this recent development on TVCBreakfast says that that INEC overreached itself by re-emphasising that the elections will not hold.

He stated that Section 153 F talking about the constitution already gave a stipulation of what INEC is all about and one of their roles is not to cancel a major election, but to oversee the conduct of an election adding that another of INEC’s role is not to prevent an election from holding.

But if an election is held, INEC has the powers to cancel a held election but not to out rightly allow election take place.

Mr Kunnu said since 2015 we’ve had back to back postponement of elections.

He noted that the helmsmen do not quite understand the economic implications for postponing elections.

We have about a month of people’s sources of income held up because the election takes precedence.

He said INEC sounds as if it has the power at the same time to proclaim a State of Emergency.

Section 305, 1-6 of the constitutional stipulates clearly that the government can indeed talk about state of emergency, the state government can also intimate the government about such if it’s happening within their territory.

He added that respective government agencies must understand that they are speaking as an arm, not as those who employ them to do services to the nation, something of which INEC must understand.

“If INEC is saying that the state of security in those places are so bad that elections may not hold, then what is federal government, the parent body, doing, that it has not been able to identify these problems that are so much such that it is not calling state of emergency?

Mr Kunnu said the federal government must begin to do crash courses, on how it informs people so that they don’t speak from different parts of their mouths.

He noted that across the agency of governments there needs to be a reinvention of how information is processed, managed and disseminated so that we can have a coherent system of managing things such as we have seen.

“INEC should stop telling us about not having an election. Rather, the federal government, as Lai Mohammed have said, has actually taken a step for that to say we are in charge. There wouldn’t be such.

“INEC had in October of 2022 told the world that the insecurity situation won’t prevent them from having an election. November, December 305,000,000,000 billion with an increment of about 10 billion to their own yearly budget, making it 50 billion and INEC is telling us that they won’t conduct an election, they have to.