By Ikechukwu Amaechi
I had very instructive discussions with two A-list Nigerian politicians before and after the Edo State governorship election; the first being on Wednesday, three days before the poll. Both men have held positions of immense responsibility in government both at the state and federal levels.
The first politician dismissed those who believed that given the pedigree of the 18 candidates and sophistication of the Edo electorate, the odds favoured the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, candidate, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, as unrealistic.
He was unequivocal that the result of the election
had already been written. “I don’t know why Nigerians are so naïve. Which
election are they talking about? The same election which result had already
been written?” he asked.
That was incredulous. I reminded
him of the sophistication of the Edo electorate and how they stepped up to the
plate in the 2020 governorship election. He riposted that times have changed
and INEC has become more brazen, emboldened by the unscrupulousness of the new kids
on the leadership block.
We left it at that. On Sunday,
at exactly 2.33 pm, when INEC’s deviousness was on full parade, he sent me a
text message: “I told you.”
Then, on Sunday, at exactly 9.37
am, the second politician called to lament. What he said was spine-chilling.
“Have you seen what is happening in Edo? These guys have become so brazen. This
is unbelievable. What this means is that anyone contesting elections in Nigeria
today will be doing so at his own risk.”
None of them is from Edo State.
So, they had no dog in the fight, so to speak. But as stakeholders, they were
as worried as every other well-meaning Nigerian. But I am more worried now
because of their present mindset.
Before now, the risk we faced as
a result of the insufferable duplicity of INEC was voter apathy. Over the
years, as people came to the realisation that their votes never counted, voter
enthusiasm continued to wane.
Only 28.63 per cent of all
eligible voters participated in the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly
elections. That was a new low in what has become a steady decline in the
turnout of voters during elections. For instance, while in 2011, voter turnout
was an impressive 53.7 per cent, it dropped to 43.7 per cent in 2015 and 34.75
per cent in 2019.
After the 2023 elections, it was
apparent that the voter apathy will intensify and the Edo governorship election
where only about 24.49 per cent of the 2,629,025 registered voters voted has
proved that. One would have thought that such embarrassing statistics will make
the electoral umpire have a rethink. No! Instead of thinking of how to clamber
out of the putrid hole of electoral malfeasance, the hardened enablers of
electoral fraud continue to dig deeper.
Now, the consequence stares us in the face. Even
politicians no longer have faith in INEC and if things remain the way they are,
no credible Nigerian will waste his time and resources contesting elections
again. The implication is that going forward, certificate forgers, age cheats,
drug barons and sundry fraudsters will have the electoral field all to
themselves.
The Edo election has confirmed
something which every discerning Nigerian knows: the Mahmoud Yakubu-led INEC is
not credible, with no moral fibre to conduct free, fair and credible elections.
But by this brazenness, INEC has
also finally overreached itself. As the legendary Chinua Achebe said in his
book, A Man of the People,
Yakubu now epitomises that vile character, Josiah, the local shopkeeper, who
tricked a blind beggar and stole his walking stick. As one of the villagers
said: “Josiah has taken away enough for the owner to notice.” In the same vein,
Yakubu and the INEC gang have crossed a line with the conduct of the Edo poll
and longsuffering Nigerians have noticed.
Already, director of the Abuja
School of Social and Political Thought, Dr. Sam Amadi, has called for the
disbandment of INEC as presently constituted, insisting that evidence abounds
the electoral umpire was to blame for every bad election conducted in the
country.
I agree in toto! And I make bold to say that the APC and its candidate, Senator Monday Okpebholo, didn’t win last Saturday’s Edo governorship election. What INEC did was a perpetuation of the electoral malpractice that has made Nigeria a laughing stock in the comity of democratic nations.
Don’t take only
my word for that. All the accredited civil society organisations, CSOs, that
observed the poll have rejected the result, insisting that it lacks integrity.
The problem, as it has always been the case, started at the point of result
collation from the ward, local government to the state level, which
contradicted the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022.
A coalition of civil society
groups, including Advocacy for Quality Leadership and Health Awareness
Foundation; Grassroots Development and Peace Initiative; Citizens Rights and
Leadership Awareness Initiative, etc., alleged on Sunday that INEC used two
sets of result sheets — one used in the field and another that favoured the APC
– during the collation in specific senatorial districts.
The Nigeria Civil Society
Situation Room and some of its accredited member organisations, including
Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD-West Africa; Yiaga Africa, Kimpact
Development Initiative (KDI), Nigerian Women Trust Fund, NWTF; and TAF Africa,
were even more scathing in their report.
In a statement on Monday, they
noted that while “the voting process was concluded in a relatively peaceful
atmosphere, the results collation process in some LGAs were not peaceful and
did not meet the electoral integrity standards for results management.”
Concerned that the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 and INEC guidelines on collation process were wilfully compromised, particularly in Egor, Ikpoba Okha, Oredo, Esan West and Ovia South-West LGAs, they said: “Our observation of the collation process shows that it was not transparent nor opened to representatives of the various candidates in some cases.
In addition, it lacks transparency in the application
of the provision of the Electoral Act and the INEC Guidelines on over-voting
and cancellation of results from polling units.”
Bemoaning the over-voting that
was reported from more than 370 polling units across the State, they returned a
damning verdict: “It is our observation that the Edo State Governorship
election 2024 failed to fulfil the requirement of the conduct of credible
elections, and again, raises questions about election credibility in Nigeria.
As with recent polls, INEC’s ability and willingness to conduct credible
elections in Nigeria remains questionable.”
The big elephant in Nigeria’s
election room has always been collation and Yakubu knows that. As a history
professor, he is aware of the admonition of the late Soviet dictator, Joseph
Stalin, to his party apparatchik in 1923 thus: “I consider it completely
unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily
important is this — who will count the votes, and how”, because: “Those who
vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
So, the electorate voted in Edo
and then INEC allowed itself to be manipulated in deciding the “winner.” What
is even more worrying is the impunity. For instance, as at 8:40 am on Sunday,
results from 4455 out of the 4,519 polling units where elections were held in
the state – 98.58 per cent – had been successfully uploaded on the INEC Result
Viewing Portal, IREV, which means that Nigerians knew as a fact who won the
election. Yet, leaving its own portal, the self-same INEC had the audacity to
collate results from only God knows where that was totally at variance with
what is on the IREV.
Those who want to be diplomatic
have called for calm, asking those holding the short end of the electoral stick
to follow due process in seeking redress.
Due process would mean going to
court. That will be foolhardy because it is another layer of the fraud. As Mr.
Jibrin Samuel Okutepa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), noted recently, “No
matter the volumes of evidence, the judiciary appears to have taken stand and
seems to be siding with the people who have no regard and respect for the
sovereignty of the people.”
And his advice, for me,
suffices. “It is my proposal to all ‘losers’ of elections in Nigeria not to
waste time and resources to file election petitions because it is easier for an
elephant to go through the eyes of the needle than for anyone who was robbed of
victories in our elections to get immediate remedies and electoral justice.”
If I were Asue Ighodalo, the latest victim of
Nigeria’s soulless electoral mafia led by Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, I will not go to
court. The matter will be settled on the streets of Edo. If that is what those
inclined to being politically correct call anarchy, so be it.
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