Update on 2023 Election Matters | Tellwell Newspaper
Tellwell Newspaper, Abuja – Nigeria:
By Dr Bello Abba Ahmed
I served as a local government collation officer in the just concluded presidential, senate and house of representative elections. And I was privileged to have done the same national assignment in the elections of 2015 and 2019 respectively. As such I believe I have a little to say based on my experience.
The fact is, no election can be perfect or hitch-free especially in a developing country like Nigeria where we have failed institutions and endemic corruption. No doubt elections in the past were typically characterized by brazen rigging, buying and selling of votes, violence and thuggery. Of course, what do you expect of a society that is dominated by illiterates, unemployed and the poor everywhere. They can be easily tempted, manipulated or cajoled using money, or intimidated by thugs or even the security personnel in some cases.
Uneducated people are easily cowed into anything positive or negative. But the case of Nigeria is different as even the so-called educated are not immune from behaving like illiterates or worse.
Unfortunately, our education system has two fundamental flaws; First, it doesn’t teach us critical thinking, as such we are accustomed to others deciding for us in our everyday life, such as our parents, teachers, Imams, pastors etc. And secondly, it doesn’t imbibe in us the spirit of tolerance for others that either look different from us or hold opinions different from ours. That’s why most Nigerians, irrespective of their educational attainment, are potential fanatics, highly intolerant and violent in character.
I believe, due to the high level of corruption and ethnic chauvinism, every ministry, department and agency (MDA) in Nigeria can be compromised. And this includes even the security agencies. Therefore, we cannot completely exonerate the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from allegations of corrupt practices and the possibility to align with the ruling government to manipulate votes in its favour. That’s a highly likely scenario, no doubt. However, I am not in the position to defend INEC; I can’t even do that. I just intend to relate my opinion based on my experience as an ad hoc staff in three elections consecutively.
One thing that is obvious about INEC is the way they have been working assiduously in improving the logistics and election processes far better than how it was done in the past. Every election seems to be better than the previous one. In 2015, the permanent voters’ card (PVC) and card reader were introduced to ensure that only the registered voters in a polling unit (PU) were eligible to vote. To further fortify the election process, the card reader served two functions. It contained the details of all the registered voters in that PU and it was also used for the accreditation of voters. So, the simple rule was you couldn’t vote above the registered voters in the PU. Once you did that, that polling unit would be cancelled.
The same system was applied in 2019 elections. And that substantially reduced rigging.
In these two elections the steps involved voter accreditation using the voters’ card. The barcode was scanned by the card reader or using thumb print and if a voter was cleared, they would return at a later time and would be issued the ballot paper to cast their votes.
INEC evaluated the flaws in the previous systems and made some more improvements in the 2023 elections. It introduced Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which is an enhanced equipment over the card reader. The system authenticates voters using fingerprint and facial recognition technology. It is also capable of scanning and electronically transmitting (though it should have been uploading scanned manually computed results sheets) results to the INEC result viewing portal (IReV). This is an addition to monitoring the whole election process by major stakeholders, comprising party agents, civil society, the police, DSS, civil defense, immigration, independent monitors and the media at every level of collation, from registration areas/wards, Local Government Areas, States and the National level. And with the prompt uploading of scanned result sheets to IReV, the process gives little room for rigging and other anomalies, relative to how it was done in the past. During the exercise It was obvious that every stakeholder was giving update on situation report to their respective principals, including individual observers reporting on social media.
Another meritorious development brought in by INEC in this year’s election is the replacement of number of registered voters with number of PVCs collected as the yardstick for comparing total votes cast. This is an important innovation in minimizing excessive rigging because there is no way total votes cast should exceed the number of accredited voters, let alone exceed the number of PVCs collected in a particular polling unit. So, there are a number of simple statistics for checks and balances which were missing in past elections before 2015.
However, politicians are very smart and dubious, as such we can not rule out the possibility of rigging and unwholesome practices in the elections despite all these protective measures.
First, the high level of poverty in the country has given unfair advantage to politicians to lure voters with petty gifts like food items, clothes or paltry sum of money. We have seen numerous food items and clothes with pictures of contestants everywhere in the country.
Secondly, it’s possible for them to bribe officials and have access to sensitive election materials like ballot papers and rig the election. Reports of unauthorized ballot papers discovered in ballot boxes proves this point.
Thirdly, thugs are used to destroy election materials where a particular candidate foresees election loss. Video clips of such violent incidents are ubiquitous on social and mainstream media.
A leopard never sheds its spots. To outsmart their opponents and the electoral process, politicians now tend to ‘play’ according to the rules of the game. Since party agents are trained by INEC, politicians learn from them the rules and the laws governing the elections. They are fully aware of what to do if they want the election cancelled or warrant a rerun in the event the forecast of the outcome doesn’t favour them.
As such, we should stop blaming INEC entirely for the flaws in our electoral process. The major culprits that undermine the system are politicians and the society that mortgage their future by trading it with gifts from them. Once you sell your vote, it means you have given the politicians the mandate to steal your resources and retrieve the principal they have spent on you plus interest. The sooner we understand that politics in this part of the world is not about sacrifice but business the better for us. It is a clear profit-making cartel with board members that invest their money, and managers to oversee and guarantee maximum returns.
It’s better for the common man to realize that irrespective of party affiliations, politicians connive at the higher level to strategize on how to perpetuate their vested interests through deceiving the electorate. We have witnessed reports of political parties covertly promoting candidates in the opposition to defeat their party but protect their interests. The sacred maxim of the politicians is “what is in it for us, not what is in it for the people.”
I congratulate the president-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu for emerging victorious. We hope, you will hit the ground running. We know you have the capacity to turn around events and salvage Nigerians from these predicaments. We know that one of your prime qualities is the capacity to mobilize the best team and resources to confront development issues head-on. We witnessed how you did it in Lagos and we now hope you will extend that dexterity to cover the rest of Nigeria. And we beg those in the opposition to accept the outcome in good faith and prioritize public interest over party differences, and work towards building a better Nigeria.
Dr Abba wrote this piece from Federal University Dutse, Jigawa state.
