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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The intriguing dramatic ending of the Adamawa governorship supplementary election last week seems to have brought temporal reprieve and even raised a glimmer of hope for the embattled Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) since the conclusion of the 2023 general election.
INEC, in the consideration of many discerning Nigerians, the international community and election foreign observers, had become, more or less, a pariah institution after the February 25 presidential election and the announcement of the presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President-elect at an odd hour of 3.00am on March 1.
The announcement had come with more disappointments than wild jubilation; it had come with more condemnations, rejections and unending protests across the country than the celebration that usually accompanies such an announcement.
In the feelings of many, the prevailing enthusiasm before the election from Nigerians at home and in diaspora evaporated and turned into disenchantment, just as despondent, fury, and endless complaints beclouded the expectant joyous excitement that enveloped the country in the build up to the poll.
To many analysts, there was no reflection that both the victor and vanquished are covered in glory as a result of the manner the electoral umpire conducted the election. There were more loud voices of grumbling than triumphant bells. It was a case of glory departing from the country.
And judging by the leadership crisis currently rocking the ruling party and the lack of enthusiasm among leaders and members of the party, there are only few Nigerians that will claim that they are proud of the commission’s conduct of the 2023 general election at the moment.
To many pundits, no matter the perception one wants to explain and justify the general mood of Nigerians over the conduct of the 2023 election, the popular cliché of free, fair and transparent poll was conspicuously avoided. What it means is that the dominant feelings are that INEC did not live up to its promise and expectations of many Nigerians.
That general feeling of many was understandable. The electoral umpire had heightened and crashed the hopes of many Nigerians with its promise to depart from the previously unreliable conduct of elections with its deployment of technology like the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and more importantly, the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) touted to be endowed with the game changer of uploading the election results real-time.
Those that held INEC to those promises it repeatedly made to Nigerians and the international community, were completely disappointed when the commission delivered little or nothing, resulting in the call for the resignation/automatic sack of the commission’s boss, Mahmood Yakubu.
According to many political pundits, the questionable behaviour of the electoral umpire during the conduct of the 2023 general election, especially in accepting mutilated results sheets and failure to translate results real-time from the polling units to the IReV portal were cited and referenced above the usual antics deployed by desperate politicians to discredit elections in Nigeria.
Since the conclusion of the poll, the electoral umpire has expectedly been taken to the cleaners. Blames and abuses had trailed most of the decisions taken by the management, regular and ad-hoc staff of the commission, ranging from the outcome of the presidential to the governorship and National Assembly elections.
The anger, acrimony and bile from many disgruntled Nigerians were based on the fact that the technology the commission promised, especially the IReV expected to upload results in real-time, failed to live up to the expectations.
The declaration of the candidate of the APC, Tinubu, as President-elect was as disgusting to several Nigerians as the declaration of Peter Mbah, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate as the Enugu State governor-elect, Babajide Sanwo-Olu of APC as Lagos State governor-elect, ditto Abdullahi Sule of APC as Nasarawa governor-elect, in addition to Kaduna among few other states.
The announcement of those governorship results did not only contribute to worsening the credibility of the commission but also in intensifying the anger of many Nigerians against the electoral umpire.
The bitterness was displayed through the grounding of activities from the pro and anti-protesters experienced at the headquarters of the commission through barricading of roads on daily basis, starting with the thrilling one led by the presidential candidate of PDP, Atiku Abubakar shortly after declaring Tinubu the President-elect.
Appraising the performance of the commission recently, current House of Representatives Majority Leader and member-elect representing Doguwa/Tudun Wada Federal Constituency, Alhassan Doguwa, believed, like some other Nigerians, that it is a mixed grill.
Doguwa claimed in a chat with newsmen at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja that though INEC scored a pass mark in conducting the 2023 general elections, there are still lots of areas the commission should improve upon.
“In an institutional process which has to go through borrowings, I want to believe that INEC did quite well. But the fact is that they still have some other things to perfect. In the case of this election, I want to believe that INEC got a pass mark in the sense that they were as transparent as possible and have been so prompt.
“For example, within 30 or 40 days, the commission has been able to organize supplementary elections. However, in those other areas where the commission had some challenges in the process, they were like an institutional problem, perhaps most of the issues came through individual exigencies of one person or the other.
“Where mistakes were committed, whether deliberately or otherwise, by an individual, they should not be extended to the institution. I want to say without any fear of contradiction that INEC under Mahmood Yakubu has done a wonderful job,” he assessed.
However, a member of his party’s National Working Committee (NWC) differed in his opinion while assessing the performance of the commission. And notwithstanding that his party emerged winner of the presidential election; he did not spare the commission.
“If we must tell ourselves the truth and nothing but the truth, we have to admit that INEC clearly failed to meet up with the promises it repeatedly gave to Nigerians. Perhaps, for the first time in the history of conducting elections in the country, the blame shifted from the desperation of politicians to the commission.
“In fact, many of the politicians that believed and trusted that the BVAS and IReV will work as promised by the commission were deceived and disappointed. I can tell you that some of them are yet to recover from the shock of what they saw during the election. The commission failed and there are no two ways to look at it,” the APC NWC member fumed during a chat with Daily Sun in Abuja.
In the face of all these, the commission’s chairman, Yakubu, had continued to look subdued and maintain a sordid silence since announcing Tinubu, the President-elect.
He has made a few appearances at some events organised by the commission, including the presentation of certificates of return to those that emerged winners during the main and supplementary elections but he was yet to make an official statement.
And when many expected that he would right the wrongs committed during the presidential election using the governorship and State Assembly election of March 18 as another litmus test, the outcome of the polls in Enugu, Abia, Kaduna, Kebbi, Adamawa, Ogun, Lagos, and few others blurred the image-redemption opportunity.
While the results of three states of Abia, Enugu and Adamawa, had the intervention of the headquarters of the commission before it could be concluded, others like Kaduna, Nasarawa, Ogun and Lagos were contentiously declared in controversial circumstances.
The cheers and encomiums the commission received across the country for reviewing the Abia governorship poll was dampened by the lampooning and hostile criticisms of its questionable directives on the Enugu governorship poll received.
“How can we admit and reject the over-voting figure of 30,000 votes but instead of cancelling the area as stipulated by the amended Electoral Act and which we have even implemented at other places, all of a sudden applied different rule in the Enugu case where the commission reduced the controversial over-voting from 30,000 to 16,000. It was even more inquisitive that the figures were far from the alleged total number of BVAS accredited votes,” a staff of the commission queried rhetorically in a chat with Daily Sun on condition of anonymity.
He further asked; “how can the commission declare the PDP governorship candidate winner with just an insignificant less than 4000 votes when the number of cancelled voters across the state is greater than the margin of the figure used in declaring the PDP candidate winner of the poll?
“I strongly believe that we actually shot ourselves in the foot. But, I saw it coming when they almost coerced the Director ICT, Chidi Nwafor, to train two of his subordinates from the South-West on the technology before redeploying him to Enugu as the Administrative Secretary.
“One of the ridiculous flimsy reasons they gave to justify their action was that Chidi is from the same state with the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi. But they were aware that certain Directors heading several sensitive positions in the commission are majorly Yoruba, the same place with the President-elect, yet they left them untouched.
“My worry is that the image of the commission under Mahmood had nosedived seriously after this election and it will certainly take time to regain it, especially when you take into consideration that some of those declared elections will be flawed at the courts”, the staff lamented.
Another image-redeeming opportunity played out again during the Adamawa governorship election. And conceded, according to many analysts, that the manner in which the management of the commission handled it gave some glimmers of hope of the possibilities of the electoral umpire redeeming its lost glory, but the role played by its Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Hudu Yunusa-Ari, in the controversy, worsened the commission’s credibility.
Although the Adamawa election was resolved in line with the aspirations and desires of many Nigerians, unlike the Enugu pronouncement, however, the commission is still battling to wriggle out of the regrettable serious allegations of financial bribery inducements to the tune of N2 billion. It was the same allegation levied against the commission in the Enugu declaration.
Understandably, many may not doubt the allegation against the commission due to the credibility doubts it recorded in the conduct of the 2023 general election. And to many Nigerians, it was a case of a witch crying at night and a child dying in the morning.
But, according to the former National Publicity Secretary of APC and former Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, all hopes are not lost in the commission redeeming its lost glory.
Speaking to Daily Sun on what the commission can do to regain the confidence of Nigerians again, Abdullahi said: “I think the decisiveness with which the commission dealt with the Adamawa governorship controversy is a glimmer of hope.
“With the Adamawa issue, INEC has regained some lost credibility for itself. I think they can build on that. I actually think they should build on that. If the Adamawa situation had been mishandled, that would have been the end of INEC. They stood up and were decisive. They dealt with the issue to the satisfaction of the majority of Nigerians. I think they can do it, they can hold on to that.
“It is quite unfortunate that things went the way they went in the conduct of the general election. At the time that INEC was making those promises of BVAS and IReV uploading the result in real-time from the polling unit, I don’t think they were deliberately misleading Nigerians. They intended to actually do those things they promised.
“Perhaps, things didn’t walk out the way they themselves expected. They didn’t anticipate the challenges that they saw. Training in the gym for an athlete preparing for a tournament is different from the actual participation.
“Nobody wants to know how much preparation INEC put into this election, what they have done, and the challenge they suffered, all that matters to Nigerians is the final outcome of the election. That is why I don’t want to join the conspiracy theorists despite the fact that I am also a victim of the misleading promises by INEC. I believe that there is also significant experience to learn from this,” Abdullahi, who lost his senatorial seat as a PDP candidate noted.
Suggesting the possibility of eliminating ballot paper as the way forward, Abdullahi, advised the commission to improve on the technology by upgrading the BVAS machine to both accreditation and voting status.
He explained that BVAS can be configured in such a way that it will have an additional feature where the machine can have a dropdown for the electorate to automatically vote for the candidate of their choice after the accreditation.
His words: “I hope that in the next round of the elections, we will get to a point where we will eliminate ballot papers. I think if we were able to build on this technology and get to a point where we actually don’t need ballot papers, where we can use the BVAS machine to accredit voters and provide a drop-down right on the screen where they press the party of their choice that can be automatically transmitted directly into the server.
“It will go a long way to restore credibility. It is possible and the next task before INEC now is to begin to work on it and work with the National Assembly for passage of the legislation. We are not far from that point where we can have a credible election regardless of what happened,” he assured.
