Regulating the Regulators through Codes of Corporate Governance for Public Institutions in Nigeria: Using INEC as a Case Study

In Nigeria, there exists numerous policies, laws and regulations regulating one aspect of the society, economy or polity. Among them are the laws establishing INEC as the umpire body over the conduct, supervision and collation of electoral process. Beside these core roles, INEC is the regulator over political parties and their activities in Nigeria but the question this article asks is that who regulates INEC itself? A similar question also applies to other public regulators such Corporate Affairs Commission, Human Rights Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, Central Bank of Nigeria, Economic and Financial Crime Commission and many others that exists within the legal system in Nigeria? Alternatively, should we leave these statutory public regulators to operate and regulate other artificial persons under them without questioning some of their policies even when they are anti-public or anti-people or non-compliant? The article adopts the doctrinal legal research methodology to argue the need to regulate the regulators who are governmental agencies otherwise known as public regulators in Nigeria and indeed, in all nations in order to ensure sanity in the system and avoid a situation where a regulator appears to be above the law. It first examines the constitutional and statutory duties of INEC being the agency in perspective. It argues that the basis for the supposed regulation of these regulators should be the basic principles of corporate governance such as: responsibility, accountability, financial transparency/auditing, stakeholders’ participation, ethnical standard and sustainability in the affairs of the nation's electoral governance. The article concludes that there is possibility of non-compliance with statutory mandates by most regulators in Nigeria without being checkmated and until codes are put in place to regulate them, one can say that the country is being ill-governed. It also posits that in the absence of this desired codes on the Commission especially during the periods of transition, electioneering, campaign and voting, any acclaimed free and fair election is a deception and hypocrisy to the confessed electoral values and extant laws. The article therefore recommends that a Unit known as Corporate Governance Monitoring Unit be established in all regulatory agencies to ensure compliance with the ideals of corporate governance. It further suggests inclusion of neutral (non-political) experts in the governing board of INEC and/or management of election process, who will first be trained before discharging their duties rather than those who are co-opted on a temporary basis each time election is to be conducted to act as collation and returning officers. Keywords: Regulating, Regulators, Corporate, Governance, Electoral, Process, INEC. DOI: 10.7176/DCS/11-7-05 Publication date:July 31st 202