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God, through the scriptures, said in Matthew 5:13, “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men”.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is the institution constitutionally imbued in paragraph 15(a) and (e) of Part 1 of the third schedule to the 1999 Constitution, as amended, with the power to organise, undertake and supervise all elections to the offices of the President and Vice President, the Governor and Deputy Governor of a state, and to the membership of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the House of Assembly of each state of the Federation; arrange and conduct the registration of persons qualified to vote and prepare, maintain and revise the register of voters for the purpose of any election under this Constitution. In the execution of these powers, INEC is constitutionally reportable or accountable to no one.
In our 4th December, 2022 edition of our column, after Prof Yakubu Mahmood had made his deceitful promises to the Nigerian people and after the President had signed the Electoral Act 2022 into law, we had this to say, “Eternal vigilance is the price you pay for democracy. This means that no institutional assurances by INEC or personal surety by the Chairman of INEC can substitute for the vigilance of the people in the protection of democracy. Power corrupts and absolute power corrups absolutely. Allowing any institution the power of absoluteness without checks and balance will simply impose on the institution the power of absolute recklessness. INEC, under Prof Mahmood, lived up to the status of absolute recklessness during the presidential election of February 25th, 2023. When Nigerians started hearing rumours as at last year that Prof Mahmood was trying to compromise the 2023 presidential election, some civil society organisations confronted him with their fears. He assured them that the polling unit results will be transmitted and transferred to the INEC Server while the hardcopy of the manual results snapped with the Bimodal Verification Accreditation System BVAS will be uploaded unto the INEC IREV Portal in real good time same day after the election to the glaring view of all Nigerians.
His assurance is in line with the provisions of the Electoral Act, Section 60(4)(5)(6), which states that “The presiding officer shall count and announce the result at the polling unit. The presiding officer shall transfer the result including total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot in a manner prescribed by the commission”. The Commission in Clause 38 of its own rules and guidelines prescribed electronic transmission of the polling unit results immediately after the election from the polling unit. Nigerians rejoiced, Mahmood was hailed. President Buhari showed the world the readiness of the security agencies to protect their lives against aggression from non-state actors. Nigerians felt secured and relaxed.
It is unfortunate that the people lost their vigilance relying on those promises. They heard when the presidential candidate of the APC told their followers, “power is not served a la carte, fight for it at all costs, snatch it, grab it and run with it”. They forgot that one Baale of Ibara openly summoned Nigerians living under his domain and threatened them with destruction if they do not vote APC. He clearly told them that they received directives from the leadership of APC to carry out the destruction of perceived opponents. PVCs of people from the Southeast were denied them blatantly which eventually disenfranchised them and some touts vowed to deal with them if they come out to vote on that day. Prof Mahmood knew all these things, yet refused to fire or replace the Lagos INEC REC, Olusegun Agbaje under whose watch these impunities took place.
On the D-day, all the fears of the Nigerian people came to pass, especially in Lagos. Men and women were brutalised for coming out to vote for candidates of their choice. Southeast people were attacked for voting candidates of their choice. Ballot papers destroyed in areas of opposition candidates strongholds. Ballot boxes snatched. Worst of all, after the voting, the presidential election results were not transmitted from the polling units. INEC wilfully and intentionally manipulated the BVAS to ensure that results were not transferred to the BVAS server and portal. The helpless INEC ad hoc staff were told that there was no code for them to transfer the presidential election. Since it’s the code that was the problem not physical malfunctioning of the BVAS machines, it’s obvious that it was the criminal activity of INEC officials who refused to provide the code that was responsible for the non-transfer of the presidential result. Section 60(6) of the Electoral Act was clear that any INEC officer who fails to transfer the result from the polling unit on the day of the election is a criminal offender of the law who should be prosecuted and sent to jail.
It was the height of betrayal, deceit and fraud for Prof Mahmood, who ought to order for the arrest of the ICT INEC officers that tampered with the BVAS server to block the uploading of the presidential results on the day of the election from the polling unit and the INEC officers who failed, refused or neglected to supply the codes to enable the transfer and the INEC officers who wilfully refused to count and announce the results at the polling units and escaped with the materials to secret places for alteration and manipulation, but rather condoned those actions and even went further to perfect the criminality and, therefore, became an accomplice and a principal offender of the law. The INEC Chairman is the Chief Returning Officer and Chief Collation Officer for the presidential election and the law puts a burden on him not to collate and announce the result stated on the collated result of the presidential election except the result has been verified and confirmed to be correct and consistent with the number of accredited voters and votes and results recorded and transmitted through the BVAS directly from polling units. The INEC Chairman was warned to use only the recorded accredited voters and votes and results in the BVAS to collate and announce the result if the manual collated result is not correct or is disputed. The Act even threatened to send him to jail if he fails to conduct the collation and announcement of the result in the prescribed manner, yet he breached all the procedure. See Section 64(4-9) of the Electoral Act 2022.
It is shameful that there was no presidential election result uploaded in the server at all from the polling units on the day of election throughout Nigeria which is a condition precedent for the collation and announcement of the results, yet Prof Mahmood went ahead with concocted and manufactured results without any verification and confirmation with the ones in the BVAS. If the BVAS machine malfunctioned in any way whatsoever that all its functions could not be performed, the law recognises that an emergency has occurred and the election must be postponed to a later date when the machines will be capable to fulfil all its functions. See Sections 24 and 47(3) of the Electoral Act.
The whole essence of Electoral Act 2022 is to ensure that the manipulation of electoral results during manual collation of results is eliminated hence the introduction of electronic transmission of results to bypass the irregularities that mar our elections during the collation of it. It’s therefore unthinkable that an INEC Chairman can openly disregard this provision of the law and resort to the manual collation of results and went ahead to announce the result and grant certificate of return to his preferred candidate. As we write this column, about six days after the election, the results in the BVAS have not been fully uploaded to the server and portal. The INEC is now feeding the BVAS with the manually collated results to tally with their concocted results rather than results transferred from the polling units. Prof Mahmood has turned our electoral system upside down. The BVAS that ought to supply the data for collation is now fed with the manually collated results just to authenticate criminality. Mahmood failed to upload presidential results electronically from the polling units and could not postpone the election to do the right thing, but it took him less than 24 hours to issue certificate of return to his preferred candidate.
This election will go down in history as the worst election in the whole world. Prof Mahmood collected tax payers money to ruin our elections. Foreign observers condemned the presidential election. The Nigeria Labour Congress and the civil societies condemned the election. All the major candidates who participated in the election rejected the results and are heading for court. It was a missed opportunity, a sad Saturday that will go down in history as a day of infamy. It’s a sign of funny things to come that the opposition candidates have addressed world conferences stating their positions on the election, but INEC’s preferred candidate has not granted any press conference stating his position. In his so-called acceptance speech, he said thank you for making me a Governor. Whenever he is able to grant any conference, Nigerians will be able to ask many questions and get clarification from him. The Professor that was appointed by APC-led administration to conduct the election openly boasted that he will organise the election howsoever he liked and anyone that doesn’t like it should go to court. All the candidates have heeded his advice to go to court. Nobody should, therefore, ask them to accept the shenanigans from INEC until the court they were sent to end their proceedings.
The great lesson here is that no matter the assurances by any public servant to the performance of his duty, Nigerians must never lose their guard to checkmate the structure of corruption and criminality in all the spheres of our national life. Above all, Nigerians must not despair or lose hope in the face of obvious provocation. We must all troop out on March 11th to vote for a new Nigeria and vote out this affliction in Nigeria. It’s crystal clear that INEC never intended to conduct a presidential election on Feb 25th. My guess is that INEC expects stiff resistance against its criminality on 11th March and may decide to back down. We must be vigilant and ready to defend ourselves against the intimidation and manipulation of evil men and ensure the emergence of a new Nigeria. Prof Mahmood should step down with the Lagos and Rivers RECs. The security apparatus should be rejigged to restore citizens confidence for the March 11th election. INEC under Mahmood is worthless and should be cast out and trodden under.
