Attahiru M. Jega In response to the rising challenge of electoral insecurity, INEC in 2011 collaborated with security agencies to establish the ICCES as the main framework for managing election security. The roles of ICCES include to: i. Coordinate the design of a comprehensive election security management system for INEC; ii. Develop locally focused plans for providing security before, during and after elections; iii. Harmonize the training, deployment and actions of security personnel on election duties; iv. Assess existing security threats across the country that have implications for elections and produce a red, amber and green electoral security map that is regularly updated; v. Advise INEC on rapid response to security threats around elections, including voter registration; vi. Ensure a reduction in transaction costs(to INEC) of dealing with individual security agencies on issues of elections; vii. Evaluate the performance of security agencies on election duties and recommend improvements and sanctions, where necessary and viii. Harmonize the election budgets of security agencies and source funding commonly, if possible. To achieve these objectives, clear tasks are specified for each security agency while collective responsibilities and coordination are also made clear. b. Funding: The second key challenge facing the Commission is adequate funding for the elections. As I earlier noted, all the relevant government agencies were very supportive in this regard in 2011 38 Stakeholders and the Electoral Process in Nigeria: Review of 2011 Elections and Projections for 2015 and we have no reason to believe that it will be different for the 2015 elections. We do recognize that organizing elections is only one of many things requiring funding by government. But the centrality of elections to our collective future is also clear. In preparing for the forthcoming elections, one guiding principle for the Commission has been to make elections more cost-effective and to give Nigerians better value for money. Our estimate is that the cost of election per voter, which is an international standard for viewing the cost of elections, is coming down in Nigeria. We project that for the 2015 elections this would come further down by almost$1from$8.80 in 2011 to$7.90, representing almost a 10% drop. This compares favourably with some other African countries. c. Attitude of the Political Class: Another key challenge facing the Nigerian electoral process is a widespread absence of moderation among politicians. We are concerned about this because even if the management of elections meets the highest standards, insofar as the contestants are unwilling to play by the rules, there will be grave problems. The Commission remains deeply concerned about growing conflicts within political parties and between contestants. The use of language is in most cases indecorous, encouraging supporters to follow suit with more intemperate language and ultimately fuelling violence. Political parties even find it difficult to select candidates, creating a situation in which practically every nomination process in Nigeria ends in a court case. In most instances, the Commission gets either directly or vicariously involved in these conflicts and court cases. Electioneering is dominated by attacks on the personality of opponents, rather than a debate of ideas and programmes. Electors have little or no space to interrogate the campaign promises made 39