2023: INEC, YAKUBU AND THE DEEP-SEATED FEARS

Paul Obi urges the electoral body to organise a credible election 

“…They say if you don’t vote, you get the government you deserve and if you do, you never get the results you expected.”  -E. A. Bucchianeri 

In less than two weeks, about 93 million Nigerians are supposed to head to the polls to elect leaders across the two branches of government: the executive and legislature. The forthcoming 2023 general elections ought to be more transparent than previous ones since Nigeria’s tortuous return to democracy in 1999. This time, the use and deployment of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and other critical technologies have now been constitutionally embedded in our extant laws to prevent the reckless rigging of elections. Such technologies should be capable of stopping political gangs from running amok and disrupting smooth universal suffrage. BVAS seeks to streamline our elections into sane and transparent polls, worthy of the name: electoral democracy. Yet, the signposts out there are dreaded. Fear, is the denominator gaining currency. All due to the chaotic and fraudulent DNA that runs in most of our public institutions. 

For instance, the BVAS technology is developed in a such manner to guarantee credible voting processes, such that underage children won’t be able to vote in places like Kano, nor the suppression of votes in Imo. BVAS is supposed to render an Oba’s threat to throw residents in the Lagoon if they fail to vote his preferred candidate impotent. Or prevent militants in the Niger Delta from stampeding universal suffrage through gunboat democracy.  With such technologies, phantom figures can’t be manufactured in the night or inside radio stations as in previous cases. Yet, like everything Nigeria, insider abuse, gimmicks and manipulation erected by the deep state syndrome will somehow frustrate the process if unchecked. This has become eminent with the February/March 2023 general elections. How? Barely two weeks to the elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under the leadership of Prof Mahmood Yakubu has not shown clear-cut commitment that politicians won’t have their nefarious ways. Also, many prospective voters could not collect their PVCs, all due to INEC’s poor planning. 

Inside INEC, there is so much concern about the possibility of insider abuse. The fear of INEC officials conniving with rotten politicians to thwart the will of the people at the ballot box. Already, there are reports of several fifth-columnists running fronts for some big guys within the system. Politicians’ proxies are capable of turning our electoral system into casino economy with the intent to manipulate the people’s mandate. In Lagos State, INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Olusegun Agbaje told the world that INEC would work with the Lagos State Parks Management Committee, headed by Mr Musiliu Akinsanya (A.K.A MC Oluomo) a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). With this there will be logistics issues, and be assured that on Saturday, 25th February, elections material for places, and stronghold of other presidential candidates like Peter Obi of Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of Peoples Democratic Party, elections materials will not arrive on time or will disappear. And with that, it’s already a crisis of INEC’s own making, geared towards compromising the elections, particularly, in Lagos.

If there’s any indication of INEC’s lack of neutrality, it is the flagrant abuse of office and impunity, particularly the case of INEC’s Twitter handle liking Seun Kuti’s Tweet that tended to show preference to APC, while disparaging and demarketing other parties and presidential candidates. Everywhere you turn; left, right and centre, there are deep-seated fears that the 2023 elections, specifically, the presidential may be compromised and manipulated for the cabal who have pocketed Nigeria in the last 62 years. These fears and concerns are not out of place. Since Yakubu took over the helm of affairs in INEC, it has been back and forth on the sanctity and neutrality of the electoral umpire. In 2019 general elections, he promised a digital cloud server, and when the D-day arrived, the server disappeared – it was no longer part of the technologies deployed. INEC bungled it. 

In Osun State gubernatorial race, there were rampant cases of over voting, leading to the nullification of Gov. Adeleke’s victory and that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). This is despite overwhelming assurance that BVAS won’t allow over voting. When we add the open day robbery of the 2018 Osun State governorship election, you will then understand the palpable air of unease associated with Yakubu’s reign in INEC. Again, consider the role of INEC in the Supreme Court’s decision in the cases of Godswill Akpabio and Senate President, Ahmad Lawan senatorial races. What you have is the trapping of insider abuse and conspiracies against the common man – the voter. 

All over the world, social scientists agreed that one of the greatest challenges with electoral democracy is the role of elections management bodies (EMB). Roland Rich in his classic work, Democracy in Crisis; Where, Why, How to Respond heralded the dangers inherent in elections where the neutrality of the electoral body is in question. The sanctity of every elections must begin with the assurance that officials of the electoral umpire do not in any way nurse any partisan flair of undercutting the will of the voters through any means. Can Nigerian voters trust Yakubu’s INEC in that regards? Can the world beckon on Yakubu to deliver free, fair and credible 2023 elections without interrupting the desire of the teeming voters to have a say in Nigeria’s democratic governance? What is the synergy that INEC has built with the police, military, and other security agencies to provide security but will not meddle in the democratic process? In what way has INEC educated voters about the possibility of a presidential run off and what the 1999 Constitution stipulates in that sense? What legal measures have INEC set in place in cases of breach of the electoral processes? These are the unanswered salient questions exacerbating fears ahead of the February 25th presidential election. 

After more than six years of pockets of victory in Edo, Ondo and Anambra, colossal failures in 2019 with the phantom server, Osun and Ekiti where massive votes buying held sway, Yakubu now has a date to show commitment and leave behind a legacy worthy of celebration.

Obi is a journalist, researcher and media scholar interested in media, elections, politics and democracy