In 2021, Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission published its “INEC Strategic Plan 2022-2026,” the third of the commission’s such plans since 1999.
Introducing it, commission chairman Mahmoud Yakubu described the objective as being “deepening electoral integrity.”
“Recognizing the central role that free, fair and credible elections play in democratic consolidation, the Strategic Planning process, began during the 2003-2007 Electoral Cycle, is a further demonstration of the Commission’s commitment to more focused, structured and deliberate planning, monitoring and implementation processes in the management of elections in Nigeria,” he said, and expressed “commitment to its implementation in the continued effort towards free, fair, credible and inclusive elections in Nigeria.”
But then came 2023, and in full view of the entire world, INEC was exposed, inflicting on the electorate massive institutional failures. The International Republican Institute’s Joint International Election Observation Mission report said that the 2023 elections fell short of citizens’ “legitimate and reasonable expectations.”
It cited such factors as significant logistical, technological, and communications failures by INEC, regional disparities in electoral integrity, instances of vote manipulation, and marginalization of key populations, which, it said, marred the electoral process and disenfranchised voters negatively.
The Commonwealth Monitoring Group, for its part, was very detailed in outlining what went wrong, particularly the role of INEC.
“While INEC’s communication strategy in the pre-election period was for the most part positive, its communication on and after election day was found wanting,” it said, among others. “INEC was slow to provide updates to the media on the causes of delays in the uploading of results forms to IReV, allowing rumour and speculation to fill the information void. Technologies that had been adopted with the express purpose of building trust in the electoral process thus became the subject of suspicion…”
The European Union Election Observation Mission was far more blunt: “The 2023 general elections did not ensure a well-run transparent, and inclusive democratic process as assured by [INEC]”, it said. “Public confidence and trust in INEC were severely damaged during the presidential poll and was not restored in state level elections, leading civil society to call for an independent audit of the entire process.”
Predictably, INEC did not admit of these institutional failures in its report on the electoral fiasco of 2023. Any day now, the commission will issue the next “INEC Strategic Plan,” as is the routine, and make the same grandiose claims about “deepening electoral integrity.”
Remember: in 2023, the voter turnout, according to INEC’s own figures, was only 26.71 per cent, meaning that, against the commission’s voter registration figure of 77 per cent, less than 21 per cent of eligible citizens voted. And that was in an election in which there was less popular cynicism than exists today, a certain level of security nationwide, and less hunger and poverty.
As Nigeria prepares for the 2027 polls, how many Nigerians trust INEC to correct its errors of 2023, and not simply hand the spoils to the ruling APC of which it is now seen to be a part of the furniture? Does INEC care about being trusted?
How many Nigerians trust the judiciary, given the experience of the past two years in particular, in which citizens have become accustomed to judges delivering a pattern of pre-packaged verdicts?
How many Nigerians trust a political system in which, two years away from the next election, the leadership of the National Assembly, abandoning their responsibility for legislation and oversight, are on the streets worshipping the executive and campaigning for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu?
In mid-2021, exactly five years ago, the federal government awarded a contract of $755m in tax credits to the Dangote Group to construct five roads, an announcement made by the then Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola. Where are those roads?
Six months later, Fashola’s MWH’s also signed a tax credit agreement with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, worth N621 billion, to construct 21 key roads. Where are those roads?
In January 2023, the government approved a request by the NNPC to invest N1.9 trillion on the reconstruction of 44 federal roads.
I ask the government, but also the news reporters and their editors who had us salivating over their stories as headline materials, where are these roads? The story is incomplete.
Just two months ago, Minister of Works Dave Umahi, celebrating Tinubu as “Roadmaster” and a “Man of Uncommon Courage,” declared that the president had poured over N2.2 trillion into “critical infrastructure” around the country, with 260 projects completed. To enable us to demonstrate our gratitude, where is a list of those roads?
And speaking of NNPC, Tinubu, and Umahi, the latter announced, just three days ago, that the president is looking for ₦3 trillion “to complete road projects awarded to the NNPC under the tax credit scheme.”
Really?
“Our president is a man with a large heart,” Umahi declared. “Despite the funding stoppage by NNPCL, Mr President, as chairman of the Federal Executive Council, directed that alternative funding mechanisms be put in place to ensure completion of all projects.”
I do not understand. How did we get here? NNPC is arbitrarily walking away from the agreements into which it entered just four years ago? If so, where are the roads it delivered, and what does its “uncompleted” projects mean? How did someone arrive at the N3trn figure, which Tinubu will now arbitrarily borrow?
And speaking of roads and borrowing, a lot has been made of the vast borrowing of the Tinubu government, including for the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, for which we have seen, among others, a $747m syndicated facility, a $347m package, and an ECOWAS Bank $100m, all ostensibly for Phase 1 Section 1 of less than 50 kilometres.
That section, remember, was launched during Tinubu’s second anniversary, only for vigilant Nigerians to find out that it had not been completed. And now, there is this, evidence that the road is being so amateurishly constructed that it is already being washed away!
All of this is at a time that Nigerians are learning that under its Conditional Cash Transfer scheme, the Tinubu government has disbursed over ₦421 billion to “vulnerable” Nigerians.
My first point is that, hopefully, the Tinubu government will provide irrefutable proof of its database.
Under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, which claimed that over eight million individuals had benefited, it was riddled with fraud, leading to Sadiya Umar-Farouq, the former Humanitarian Affairs Minister, being arrested last year over the whereabouts of N37.1bn.
Betta Edu, Tinubu’s ally and first Humanitarian Affairs Minister, lost her job last year following allegations she had attempted to alleviate her own poverty by diverting over N585m into a personal bank account.
None of this is made any easier, nor is there much comfort and hope when Nigerians reflect on Tinubu’s personal track record. While every leader and every government desires to be trusted, President Tinubu’s approval rating, as tracked by NOI Polls, was a miserable 38 per cent in May 2025.
The message is the same: all Nigerians, with the middle class neutralised by the insecurity that the Tinubu government claims does not exist, are now broken and vulnerable.
Why should we buy anything that this government is selling?
Sonala Olumhense
