2023 Election: The Betrayal, The Tragedy, The Shame

 By Tony Eluemunor

First the betrayal: Presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari and the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), without being prompted by anyone, repeatedly promised Nigerians a free and fair election in February 2023. Bu­hari promised that a transparent 2023 election would be his legacy project.

Yet, what happened? Local and in­ternational observers have derided both Nigeria and the elections. Both Buhari and the INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu knew that giving Nigeria a flawless general election was doable. They knew that the money pro­jected to meet the logistics that would make the poll transparent was duly budgeted for and the monies were made available to the electoral agency. The computing systems that would make it possible to upload results real time, and so deny election riggers the opportunity of cooking the figures at the so-called collating centres, were bought and de­signed. The right laws were in place. 

The INEC chairman was even seen in a video boasting that the results would be uploaded as they trickled in from the polling units, because it was the right of Nigerians to have it so. Then the day ar­rived for Buhari and the INEC chairman to walk their talks, and they betrayed Nigeria. Suddenly, the results were not uploaded. Suddenly, the ones that had, perhaps mistakenly, been uploaded were scrubbed. 

The INEC chairman, the same man that was on a certain video, boasting that Nigerians had the right to view the election results in real time, has kept mute about the goodness and wholesomeness of real time uploading of the results in the INEC portal. Since that poor imitation of a presidential poll ended, the mantra everywhere is that INEC was not bound by any laws to up­load election results in real time.

Whether the law stipulates the real time uploading of results is neither here nor there. The fact is that no Nige­rian law requires the INEC chairman to breathe in air through his nostrils. And no law compels him to eat food so as to remain alive. So, INEC should not even require any law to do the right thing. Laws are put in place to check the excesses of the government as well as those of the citizens. Or, is the INEC chairman saying that the university Professor that he is MUST require a le­gal stipulation and enforcement before he does the right thing?

Has the INEC chairman asked him­self why he was given that appoint­ment? Has he asked himself if he has met the responsibilities he owed his nation, Nigeria? Does he not know that progress does not only entail a forward march; it sometimes entails a standing still on a spot or even a march back­wards if only to correct the wrongs a person or institution or nation has com­mitted. But this INEC chief does not en­tertain any thought of self-examination for INEC. He carries on as though both he and INEC can do no wrong. Yet, how did the INEC under Prof Yakubu fare in the umpire role it played in the pres­idential election of 2023?

Prof Yakubu brought shame on his Fatherland. Despite all the billions spent to purchase the needed comput­ing gadgets, despite all the progress in computing and telephony, Nigeria returned to the dark ages of manual collation of election results, which enabled all sorts of criminalities to be acted out upon the peoples’ votes. Or was the necessary employment of those computing and telephony gadgets deliberately frustrated just so the poll could be rigged?

This is why I termed this failure a betrayal. It is a betrayal because the means to make the 2023 election angel­ically transparent was available to Bu­hari and INEC. The two chose to betray their country. They made a deliberate choice. I have linked or hooked both of them together because Buhari appoint­ed Prof. Yakubu. And, so far, Buhari has not shown any indication that he was bothered by the manner in which INEC conducted the presidential elections. 

Had there been a direct transmission of the results from each polling unit to the general public through the portals, all the mayhem which played out in the collation centres would have been avoid­ed. That the choice was there to make the votes from each unit to be uploaded directly to the public, but that route was deliberately disdained, must be noted. Betrayal entails unfaithfulness, duplic­ity, infidelity, treachery and disloyalty. If faults other than betrayal had caused the chaos, unmitigated havoc, bedlam and anarchy with which Nigeria’s sor­did history was worsened on February 25, 2023, that day’s election should have been canceled.

That brings us to the tragedy of that election. That day’s poll was a tragedy because it was an unmitigated disaster for Nigeria. The peoples choice of who should be their freely elected leader was disdained as in despised, spurned, disparaged and treated with massive and audacious contempt. This is tragic because the election meant the world for our teaming youths. Suddenly, matters “Nigeriana” began to matter to them unlike before. 

If this election is not redeemed and the wrongs done to the youths’ human rights (implicit in the very act of their being constitutionally responsible to choose their own leader), is not redressed, reversed and punished, they would become alienated, and to­tally so. In every country, the youths are being begged to come out and play their constitutional role of taking part in choosing a nation’s president, but in Nigeria, the youths trooped out on their own but we frustrated their patriotic ef­forts. 

History will remember that thus happened under President Buhari’s watch.

It is tragic for a nation to go through the hollow ritual of holding an election every four years, yet the people’s votes count for nothing. It is tragic for a nation that their president and the chairman of an electoral body would openly com­mit themselves to organizing free and fair elections and then go ahead to con­duct the worst election in the history of the world, after having deliberately re­fused to engage an array of computing and telephony equipment that had been purchased for such purpose. Such acts of lawlessness and criminality always weaken a society. Ah, the shame of it all.

It’s shameful that our leaders are shameless. Since the criminality that was passed off as an election on Feb­ruary 25th 2023 took place, the INEC Chairman has not uttered a word of regret and apology. He has shown no sense of remorse for having failed an entire country. And worst of all, less than a week after the flawed election, President Buhari travelled to Qatar, his fourth foreign trip in 2023, to attend the 5th United Nations Conference on least developed countries.

He went on this trip even as the en­tire world mocked Nigeria for the elec­tion fiasco and cash-swap cash crunch has made Nigeria a hell on earth and petrol scarcity has worsened the hell Buhari’s administration has turned Nigeria into. Couldn’t someone have advised Buhari to cancel that trip be­cause other leaders would be mocking him as an ineffectual leader who would jet out when his country men and wom­en were being besieged on various fronts by problems that no longer exist in other parts of the world? That trip has heaped shame on Nigeria for only unserious leaders would travel out of their countries even when “there is fire on the mountain”.

*Eluemunor is a commentator on public issues