Mike Igini Reveals INEC ‘Dinosaur Experience’ That Will Make It Difficult For Politicians To Rig 2023 Elections

A former Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Akwa Ibom State, Mike Igini has disclosed that politicians will have a hard time rigging the 2023 elections.

This is as he revealed some of the measures put in place by INEC including one which he described as a ‘Dinosaur experience’ to have a credible election in Nigeria come 2023.

Igini said apart from some of the measures he mentioned, there are other unknown steps already taken by the electoral umpire to make the 2023 election free, fair and credible.

The former INEC official said politicians thinking of rigging their way to power in 2023 are in for a shock.

Naija News reports he made the submissions on Thursday during an interview appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

According to him, “2023 will mark a watershed in the history of electoral conduct in Nigeria because INEC has developed quite a number of tools unknown to people. How many people know that INEC does tracking during elections and as I speak to you, following the signing of the Act on the 25th of February this year, on the 26th INEC went to office reversing and changing things to reflect the current electoral Act. Many politicians are going to have what we call a dinosaur experience in 2023.”

Igini pointed out that section 47 of the new Electoral Act is a major enablement that will block many loopholes usually used by politicians to rig elections.

Naija News understands Section 47 of the Electoral Act empowers INEC to use a smart card reader or any other technological device that may be prescribed by the Commission, for the accreditation of voters, to verify, confirm or authenticate the particulars of the intending voter in the manner prescribed by the Commission which was not the case before.

Explaining the importance, Igini said: “Section 47 of the Electoral Act 2022 has helped this country to cure the mischief that has been going on since the 2002 Electoral Act. Section 40 of the 2002 electoral act and section 49 of the now-repealed 2010 Electoral Act have been used by politicians to rig elections in connivance with some of our corrupt and compromised poll officials.

“For a period of seventeen years this has been the problem we have been having with section 40 of the 2002 electoral act and section 49 to the effect that when a voter comes to a presiding officer upon being satisfied that he is the true person we should give him a ballot paper, this is what has been used to rig election.”

He added that section 47 of the electoral act is why some politicians have been dropping stolen Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) because they have realized it can’t be used to rig elections anymore.

“I am sure recently you have been reading that they are dumping PVCs somewhere. Do you know the reason they are dumping PVCs? They are dumping PVCs because of the fact that section 47 has now cured this section 49 which has been used to rig before. So under the current section, all those who have warehoused INEC PVCs cannot use it anymore,” he said.

Igini added that “Today, people must take note of the following, when you get to the polling unit, no more incident form, you can no longer talk about manual accreditation but what we have now is what we call the bimodal process.”