The National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has stated that the 2011general elections produced the least numbers of petitions in recent times.

Jega stated this in Abuja on Monday, at a two-day international conference tagged ‘Emerging Electoral Jurisprudence in Africa’ when he said the 2011 elections recorded 733 petitions as compared with the 2007 elections that recorded more than 3,000.

The conference was organised by the Electoral Institute, an organ of INEC in conjunction with the Ford foundation.

Jega, who was represented by a National Commissioner, Dr Ishmael Igbani, gave the breakdown of the petitions as 2 for presidential election, 53 for governorship, 90 for Senatorial, 198 for House of Representatives and 390 for State Houses of Assembly.

He said, “Currently, the widely held view is that it is the judiciary rather than the voters that determine electoral outcomes in Nigeria.

“The judiciary, beginning from electoral tribunals to the Supreme Court, have had to decide on sensitive and prominent governorship and presidential cases, respectively.”

Jega said each presidential election litigation came with its peculiar challenges, saying “the 2011 Presidential Election Supreme Court case resulted in majority and minority decisions.

“Both decisions are quite incisive and raise many contentious and unresolved questions.”

Jega said in a good system, there must be an effective dispute resolution mechanism, rather than resorting to judicial process.

He said electoral and political litigations had however turned out to be expensive and time consuming.

According to him, “Perhaps a rethink and remodeling has become necessary to explore the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanism as an alternative to litigation.

“INEC believes that this is viable and the upgrading of ADR Unit to a Directorate and the modest success it has achieved has vindicated this position.”