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• Reveal flaws, strength of election
By Cosmas Omegoh
As controversies trail the February 25 presidential and National Assembly election, analysts, scholars, some election observers, have said that the polls were won and lost following the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) failure to deploy the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the technology it earlier promised for the polls.
They maintained that INEC’s failure to transmit the results in real time from many places opened the results of the elections to compromise.
The electoral law as amended empowered INEC to transmit results elections from polling units to a central server so as to underscore the transparency of election results. But that did not happen in many places across the country.
INEC during its past off-season elections had deployed the BVAS to good profit, and thereafter assured that the device would be used in delivering credible elections.
This assurance had raised confidence in the electoral process.
Some commentators who were directly involved in the elections said that the BVAS worked perfectly in some areas, but expressed surprise that INEC said it didn’t work in many other communities.
They also shared their views on the elections held in the penultimate weekend.
One of them, Prof Godwin Okoye, a lecturer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) is vexed that INEC’s performance in the last elections has brought pain and sorrow to many.
Hear him: “If you look at political participation, in USA, for instance, whenever they are in difficulty, they have this tendency to look for a messiah. Then they come out and vote.
“Nigerians particularly the youths seemed to have done that during the last elections; even the market women seemed to feel the need for a messianic type of a leader. People showed massive interest during the campaigns. Even the uneducated seemed to be saying ‘enough is enough.’ They seemed to see liberation coming their way. So, this got a lot of people, especially the youths.
“Therefore, the elections made us to believe that there was hope with the youth consciousness we saw.
“However, the elections turned out demoralising, confusing, and disheartening. It brought me hopelessness. I can find enough words to describe how I feel, and probably how millions of other Nigerians also feel about the outcome. It seemed like a dashed hope.
“I reason that we may have lost a lot of opportunity to save this nation from psychological and physical disintegration.
“I thought God had presented this nation an opportunity to salvage itself, but somehow, we tend to have thrown that opportunity away.”
Recalling his experience during the election, he said: “I travelled from Nsukka to my village in Enugu State to participate in the elections. It was hitch-free. The BVAS worked very well in my community. We had 14 poll units. There were no complaints.
“But I was shocked when I heard that in some areas, INEC resulted to manual collation.
“In my opinion, the resort to manual collation was a deliberate attempt to rig the elections. What INEC did was deliberate.
“I thought that the so called BVAS would have saved us a lot of madness. But INEC in most places chose otherwise.
“In my area in Agwu LGA of Enugu State, with a total of 14 polling units, the BVAS worked perfectly. The young corper who manned the booth where I voted was alone; everything was perfect.
“But I think the excuse being given about the BVAS was a deliberate act to rig the elections and they succeeded.
“Talking about logistics, everything was on time. Again, that was perfect. The corper and policeman arrived promptly. Those who voted had the opportunity to do so.
“But on transparency, when you set out to do something wrong, things will always go wrong. For INEC, this act of incompetence, and deliberate act to sabotage its own rules have always been there. It has always had this deliberate act of rigging elections for party or candidate. We have the history: from the Obasanjo era through Yar’Adua to Jonathan; and the beat goes on.
“INEC has never had my confidence in conducting elections in a transparent manner. This one is not different. The party in power has always dictated the outcome of the elections, and that is what we have seen.
“Let’s be honest about it. The Presidency controls INEC; constitutionally INEC is independent, but in practice it is not; sadly that will continue to be the case until something drastic happens.”
Not happy too on the outcome of the election is Iorbee Ihagh, a former Police Commissioner and the current President General of Mdzough U Tiv Worldwide, Tiv’s socio-cultural group. He saw the election as an attempt to deny the will of the people.
His words: “We the ethnic nationalities of Nigeria had ceded the Presidency to the South because the North had had it. In the South, we reasoned that it should go to the Southeast because the Southwest had had got it; the South-south had had it too.
“But we don’t know the magomago they have done there. I’m reading a lot of things; I’m learning a lot of things: how huge money exchanged hands.
“I’m not happy with this situation. People are not happy with too.”
Ihagh was disappointed that INEC changed the game midway.
“When you start playing a game, midway, you don’t change the goalpost.
“We were told that collation was going to be done in Abuja, but later on, they started doing things differently. That is where the wrong doings started coming from. Nobody is happy with that.
“Left to me, the INEC boss did not do well. He had promised that he was going to do credible elections; and that was what every Nigerian wanted. So, people had to vote for the people they believed would change the face of the country – not those who are almost gone.
“In the end, INEC didn’t do what it told us it was going to do. And so in my own view, the election was not well conducted.
“Where I voted, things were fine. I thought that the result was going straight to INEC headquarters. I didn’t know that they were going to make some changes at the state headquarters. There they jettisoned the BVAS machines. Some of the machines were stolen; all that was pre-arranged. No one is happy with that!” he said.
He also stated: “Where I voted, there was orderliness. I was first to vote. Everything went fine. I was excited. I believed that it was the same elsewhere, but I was wrong. If they had used the BVAS, that could have been the turning point in Nigeria’s elections.”
For Liborous Oshoma, a lawyer, analyst and commentator, the elections presented a potpourri of the good and the bad.
He said: “Generally, my impression is mixed. First, my expectations on the conduct of the elections were largely unmet. But at the end of the day, the surprises the elections threw up were awesome.
“I have been an advocate of citizens participation in elections and civic responsibility. My motto has always been, ‘if your votes do not count, nobody will buy it.’
“I like the fact that I saw a lot of Nigerians trooping out to participate in the elections and to exercise their civic responsibility. Another instructive part was that in the past, some states used to return two million votes, four million votes, but the numbers we saw, were a reflection of the fact that we truly need to look at our population again.
“From this election, I take away the fact that in some places, the voice of the people prevailed – vox populi vox dei. It showed that the people can participate in the process. Even though their entire expectations were not met, the result of the National Assembly election to a large extent reflected the desires of the people.
“That also shows that elections are a marathon and not a dash. If the people work on it, someday, they will truly determine who governs them.
“There were people who benefited from those elections who did not even print a poster except that they tagged alone a particular party. That shouldn’t be so. Some good people lost elections just because they belonged to a party that has been tagged as bad. We should be able to question individual capacity and not a bandwagon effect. We should do away with the messiah posture.”
Looking at how INEC marred the polls, he said: “First and foremost, we talked about logistics. Since 1999, that has been a recurring decimal in our elections: late arrival of election materials and staff.
“But the sour point now was INEC’s failure to use the BVAS in some places. A lot of people had faith in the process in the belief that BVAS would reduce to the barest minimum, constant fraudulent glitches we had consistently experienced in our elections. But unfortunately, the BVAS that was supposed to reduce manipulations ended up being the albatross of the same election due to human actions and inactions. I say this because guns don’t kill by themselves; human beings fire the guns that kill.
“When Nigerians invested so much hope in the process, it was against the background that they were promised that the functionality of technology was going to make a lot of differences; and indeed, in the beginning, people saw that in places where the technology was deployed; it made a whole lot of difference. But did INEC see to the end of the usage of that device? That was where the challenges now came from, despite the late arrival of materials.
“The non-usage of the BVAS has now become the source of unexplainable challenges we have experienced.
“No matter how well INEC tries to explain the transparency of the elections and the eventual outcome, that lack of usage of the BVAS is certainly going to be the sour point of those elections no matter how it is explained.
“The verification of the voters in some areas was seamless. We saw how well it was to upload the National Assembly election results, but when it came to the Presidency, things changed. It was as if the entire network collapsed or was shut down.
“The non-transmission of the presidential election results is going to be a sour point in the elections. This was to eliminate the presumed manipulation at the collation centres. But INEC ended up taking the results to where they were going to be manipulated; certainly, that was going to happen.
“There was this recommendation by the committee set up by the late President Musa Yar’Adua on the true independence of INEC. But in reviewing our electoral laws, did we have recourse to that recommendation? Even the press went cold on it. Why was the reason for setting up the panel? When Buhari came on board that recommendation was set aside.
“People might say we recorded some positives during the last elections and, therefore, let’s go to sleep and without asking how do we rework our electoral act to ensure that INEC is truly independent both in operations, process, and people who man those operations? That INEC is made up of people who can majorly agree to their integrity.”
For Comrade Abdulahi Jabi, the chairman, Campaign for Democracy Human Right Advocacy of Civil Society of Nigeria, who led over 1,772 observers to monitor elections in Niger State, what he saw was perfectly conducted polls.
His words: “For the first time I saw an election that had zero tolerance for violence; the citizens behaved relatively well within the confines of the electoral law. I saw people come out to vote. And the result reflected their choices.
“In Niger State, things went well; the citizens complied with the procedure. There was a good number of security and INEC personnel; materials arrived in good time. The voters voted according to their conscience.
“To the best of my knowledge, the BVAS did the magic.
“The introduction of technology into the electoral process has raised the citizens’ confidence in elections; that has shaped their conduct.
“After the elections, the transmission of results was done with the party agents, and observers present.
“For the first time, Nigeria had such a peaceful election, and the citizens were orderly.
“The election saw massive active youth involvement. They have changed the dynamics of voting. That was why we saw a surge in places like Lagos where the Labour Party sprang surprises.
“In the FCT, the Labour Party candidate defeated a ranked senator who had been there for 12 years. These are some of the finest things the process threw up. I think they are good for democracy.
“For me, INEC delivered on its mandate 85 per cent, especially where I covered. I led 1,772 persons cutting across local and international observers.”
He, however, stated: “In some places, the BVAS could not recognise faces or finger prints.
“In some other areas, the ink pad was bad; people thumbprinted with ink from ball pens.”
Also contributing, Fred Nzeako, a lawyer and an analyst, who participated in the elections, said:
“The surprising aspect of what went down on February 25 is the failure of INEC to deliver credible election. Any other thing is as a result of that failure.
“Now that INEC is being accused of simply allocating results to candidates, who knows whether they wanted to use the failure of the big governors to secure Senate seats to deceive the public to believe that the elections were credible?
“All eyes are on Aso Rock; that is where the bulk stops in Nigeria. As long as INEC didn’t get things right, all other things are secondary.
“I’m deeply shocked by the failure of INEC to deliver on its promises.
“Everything was given to it. It got every in terms of legislation and finance from the executive, as well as cooperation and funding from development partners from all over the world.
“But sadly, INEC simply dropped the ball, and threw every other goodwill it had under the bus and went on to deliver very shoddy elections.
“I took active part in the elections and I know what we saw. Is INEC telling us that only 21million people voted in the last elections out of the 98 million registered voters? Then what happened to all the enlightenment given to the people, making many to become interested in the process?
“What went down was mere allocation of votes. So, it becomes very difficult analysing this election because one will be doing so based on what INEC wants them to see and not based on what the people voted.
“Now, there is a need to interrogate the numbers. How can the result of three states be exactly the same? I’m talking about Bauchi, Yobe and one other state. It is not possible. How can President Muhammadu Buhari’s polling unit in Daura record exactly the same number of votes in 2019 and 2023? The figures stand at 523 for APC, and 03 for PDP in 2019 and still remains the same in the last elections.
“Now, the Labour Party is telling Nigerians and the rest of the world that from the collation it did on its own, with the primary result sheet its agent obtained, it scored over 900,000 votes in Lagos, but was allocated a different figure. Does that make sense? That with all the enlightenment, Lagos was returning a little over a million votes? There was no voter apathy that we know. So, we have grounds to believe that the results we are seeing are suppressed.
“Sadly, this is going to be a kind of election that will not be a reference point.
“Our electoral law is very good; we only need to punish those who undermine the law. I have always maintained that times without number that there is no rigging that can take place without INEC. The staff get easily compromised. We see these things always in the field.
“They failed to manipulate the BVAS. Whosever programmed the BVAS did an excellent job. A friend of mine who is a top programmer said before one can tamper with the BVAS, it will take them a whole day or two. It was difficult for them to manipulate the BVAS and that was why they packed it by the side and opted for manual collation. We know the impact of computer in curbing corruptions. Once human hands are used in collating results, obviously, it can never be the same again.
“The voting was good; the BVAs did its work, but the last assignment of the BVAS which was the transmission of the result was not done.
“Now, the law provides that the result must be transmitted electronically and that was where everybody hinged their hope for a credible election in 2023, but INEC in its corrupt wisdom decided to park it be the side and chose manual collation, saying that their sever malfunctioned.
“Recall that in 2019, the server was the issue. Today, again, we are still talking about the server, despite all the promises and pledges made by INEC. That has left room for all the grey information and conspiracy theories.
“Sadly, they didn’t even collate the result at most of the polling centres. They bypassed the unit centres and moved to the local government collation centres and made sure that those chaps in the field were unable to transmit results as they were asked to do. It was intentional. INEC intentionally sold this election. It was extremely very unfortunate. If the elections were free and credible, Nigerians will know. We have eyes to see.
“We need peace in the country, but not that of the graveyard; we need peace anchored on equity and justice not on manipulation.”
Prof Yusuf Dankofa, a Law lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria is equally unhappy with the turnout of the elections, which he insisted recorded below average performance.
He said: “I am of the view that the presidential election was below average in the sense that INEC blatantly refused to upload the results from the polling units into its portal as provided by the Electoral Act and INEC manual.
“INEC is duty bound to transmit election results electronically and this can be gleaned from paragraph 38 of the INEC manual when read in conjunction with section 149 of the Electoral Act 2022 and the 1999 constitution as amended. That paragraph gave INEC the unassailable powers of transmission of result at the polling units to its portal. INEC’s refusal to comply with this mandatory provision of statutory law and its manual has definitely diminished the credibility of the elections especially when viewed within the backdrop of the promises given to Nigerians by its top brass to deploy technology so as to enhance the credibility of the entire process
“The fulcrum of a transparent and credible election, therefore, rests and starts from this electronic transmission in that other layers can only be deemed valid if the foundation is not jettisoned. INEC, therefore, jettisoned that foundation and it became difficult for party agents and Nigerians to compare the manually-collated results with the non-existed ones as at the time of announcement. It, therefore, fueled suspicion, a suspicion that is rooted in the unpardonable omission of INEC which was given enough resources and time to conduct what could have been the best elections in recent times.
“There were many cases of child-voting and violence in many flashpoints across the country. Security was poor, and hoodlums had a field day in many places.
“The elections were peaceful in the North, but the general voter apathy in the country is such that it will continue to raise the issue of lack of trust by the general populace towards elections generally which ultimately will always give room for vote merchants to continue to manipulate the process for their nefarious gains.
“To me, elections in an underdeveloped economy with poor or non-existing infrastructure and technology will always largely produce non-legitimate winners. Don’t forget about the politics of do or die in Nigeria. People want to win elections by force because they understand the enormous advantages that power confers on its holder in Nigeria. Since the country is not productive, politics is the only thriving industry for the bourgeoisie and their fellow compatriots, the indolent and rent-seeking private sector. This power is used in pilfering states resources for a few. Power in Nigeria is to enhance the rent-seeking and predatory nature of the Nigerian state and that is why the leadership class can kill or maim to get power. To do this, the political processes get compromised by the political class. So, when you have an electoral process that is often not fully secured, the tendency is that it can easily be compromised by the moneybags especially in a country like ours where millions of its voters are poor and hungry. If indeed we want to have a good and modern electoral system, we must totally and genuinely reform the system. That was exactly what BVAS was meant to do. You must allow technology to enhance the overall performance of the process but alas, INEC did not live up to that expectation here.”
He noted that “there are so many sour points that blighted the last elections. The non-transmission electronically of results from the polling units is one of such unimaginable blunders.
“The courts in the preceding days would sure be very busy in giving judicial interpretation on this anormaly. The glaring inconsistencies with figures given by INEC officials also show that both the RECs and other stakeholders need to be constantly re-trained. We can’t be seen on international television churning out inadequate figures and also refusing to embrace technology and be respected by the global audience.
“No law is perfect, just as no system is perfect. As we progress into the future, there will always be a need to amend our laws so as to be in tandem with emerging trends. I think also that the issues of how to conquer a larger terrain to make voting inclusive in Nigeria is also an important factor because we still have a lot of villages that are difficult to access in this country.
“On the whole, technology has shown that difficult conditions can be surmounted and Nigeria, therefore, the country must start to drive its electoral regime with technology. We also need a great deal of political reorientation for politicians. They need to understand that politics is service and not medium of enrichment. The fierce contestation for power and winner-takes-it-all mentally must give way to a more purposeful political culture that embodies service and consensus.”
