For many of us, the problem with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), until last week, had been twofold. First is the human element. The unconcealed partiality of the leadership of a body that can only credibly discharge its responsibility if it maintains stoic neutrality. Under Prof. Maurice Iwu INEC is anything but neutral. Its whole leadership, especially at the top, is composed not only of card carrying members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party but were indeed proxy candidates in the election they conducted.

The second side of the problem, which in a way is more fundamental, is the substance of the law that gives rise to INEC and the conduct of the election in the country. Reading Section 156 (1)(a) and section 65 (2) (b) of the constitution together means that INEC is not only a federal executive body but that members of its Board have to be card carrying members of a political party. This derogates from the need for the non-partisanship of the members. Added to this is the enormous power the president wields in the appointments which have always been dispensed as favors thus inducing political corruption.

These anachronistic provisions are, I believe, not accidental. They are more likely the result of what in computer lingo would be referred to as cut and paste problem, which simply copied the mode of composition of the federal executive bodies across board without looking at the specificity of each.

Both provisions have made nonsense of the institutional and financial autonomy of INEC even before an Iwu was found. These flaws that are inbuilt in the constitution are further compounded with other flaws in the electoral law which made the prospect for credible elections almost impossible in the country. It is upon this bad electoral architecture that people who have no respect and commitment to credible elections are made to superintend.

In the run up to the 2007 general election, and especially before the passage and eventual signing of the 2006 Electoral Act, institutional autonomy and financial independence were two critical deficits of INEC to which most of the electoral reform advocacy was responding. Virtually everyone believed that there was something fundamentally wrong in the way the national electoral commissioners were appointed. Similarly there was national agreement that INEC should be funded as a first line charge from the federation accounts to insulate it from the presidency that may not be interested in credible elections. We also agreed on the need for substantial/adequate funding of the electoral body so that it would have the wherewithal to carry out its assignment.

Of course a few voices, even if muffled, were raised about the seeming lack of accountability on the part of INEC to the Nigerian people. There have been no effective mechanisms for INEC to render accountability to the people either directly or even through the National Assembly. In fact at one point Iwu rubbished the call of the National Assembly to appear before it.

Some have asked that with all the power and autonomy spaces that we wanted created and protected for INEC, how were we to ensure that in the end INEC itself was accountable to the people not just in terms of conducting credible and therefore acceptable elections but also in the management and use of its funds. Would citizens be able to be assured that the body would use the fund transparently, accountably and prudently?

In our disappointment with the dismal performance of INEC in the 2007 elections, our focus around the electoral reform advocacy has been to strengthen the institutional capacity of the organization. We forgot about how it was using its money. During the electioneering campaign, while we demanded that INEC should monitor the campaign spending of the political parties and their candidates, we never seriously sought to monitor the way INEC itself was spending the resources at its disposal.

Now we are being told that INEC was not only capable of manufacturing fake votes with which to declare election victories, it is also capable of creating fake civil society organizations and making fake payments to them. Last week the lid was blown off to expose the possibility of massive corruption at the election body, as a tip off from within the body alerted the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) about a possible sleaze involving the sum of N100 million, said to have been fraudulently disbursed to some unnamed civil society organizations for unclear reasons.

What is even more, that lid came to be blown only because one of the beneficiary organizations felt cheated as only N900,000 was given to it in place of the N5 million it was said it had collected. Coming just a few weeks after a similar incident in which members of the National Association Nigerian Students (NANS) accused the same INEC of giving them only a fraction of what it claimed to have given them means that we cannot just take the happenings at the Iwu Island lightly. A corrupt electoral body can only beget fraudulent elections and already we are suffering the consequence of the work of an unaccountable body.

For the moment, it is important that EFCC fully investigate this matter. So far some directors of the body have been reportedly arrested and released on bail. We do not begrudge their right to bail but urge the EFCC to speedily conclude investigation on the matter. During the election there were similar allegations that INEC was funding faceless organizations to massage its ego and write reports about the superlative performance of the body during the election. Some of these organizations did, in fact, issue such report. We need to thoroughly look into the operations of the body in the last six years so that the public may know how this important organ of democracy had been administered.

In the end, we cannot hope to sanitize our electoral system without subjecting those at the helm of affairs to the dictates of transparency and accountability. While INEC needs to monitor and inspect accounts of political parties and the spending of their candidates, civil society organization must on behalf of Nigerians monitor and inspect the accounts of INEC. For the apostles of rule of law, this is another test and we hope they will not disappoint us.