Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu said at a Senate plenary session last week that absence of RECs in so many states is not good a good omen for the election system or for this country’s democratic order. None of the seven states in the North West zone has a REC at the moment. There are only two RECs in the North-East, only one in the South-West, one in the North-Central, one in the South-east while there are four in the South-south. However, of the eight RECs on ground, five are due to retire in February 2017 while the rest will retire latest by July next year. Only Adamawa, Bayelsa, Delta, Kaduna, Niger, Ondo, Rivers, Taraba states and the FCT have RECs at the moment. INEC spokesman Nick Dazang said Administrative Secretaries now run the affairs of INEC state offices without RECs. He said, “Where there are elections, RECs in other states are deployed to offer assistance. We really need substantive RECs to drive the process because their presence would not only add value but also strengthen the process.” It is President Muhammadu Buhari’s prerogative to appoint RECs and there is no reason why this process has been delayed for so long. Administrative secretaries should not be made to perform REC’s duties for so long. The RECs have been retiring in batches since last year and should have been replaced as they were retiring. It is regrettable indeed that the presidency sat on its hands and waited until only eight RECs are left. The constitution states that each state must have a Resident Electoral Commissioner. Why must the commission keep shuffling RECs to areas where elections are holding when the president could appoint substantive RECs for all the states? Apart from the cost implication, the danger of such deployment is that the officer may not be conversant with the peculiar nature of the area. Deploying RECs to unknown terrains a few days or weeks to an election could aid the appearance of neutrality but it doesn’t make for overall good planning. Fears are already being expressed that this attitude is laying the foundation for poor preparation for the 2019 elections. Politicians will soon start jostling for 2019 and INEC should better follow suit. Even before that, Anambra, Ekiti and Osun states will be having their off-season governorship elections. It is therefore important for RECs to be appointed as soon as possible. The commissioners ought to be posted to areas of operation long before elections so that they can be involved in planning and as such have a hang on things. We note that the presidency similarly delayed the appointment of INEC’s national commissioners for up to a year. Since last year INEC operated with only its chairman and half of the compliment of national commissioners, i.e. six out of 12. It was only last week that the president swore in six national commissioners even though Senate cleared them weeks ago after a long delay of its own. Appointing RECs should not be such a difficult thing because there are no complicated qualifications required in selecting a REC. After this prolonged delay, we also hope that in the end the right persons would be put in place. This not only means people with proven administrative competence but also ones that have no open affiliation with a political party. The people who would be in charge of conducting elections in this country should be as neutral as possible. Source:daily_trust]]>