Suddenly, there’s a burst of voter enthusiasm. A gush of freshness in the electoral agora. The stage is set for a thrilling three-horse race in the 2023 general elections. But, hey, something still throws up the creep. It is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Is INEC ready for the rumble? If the streets still tell the story, and I bet they still do, then Nigeria is heading to an election nirvana, a tipping point in voter turnout next year.
Never in Nigeria’s democratic history has voter enthusiasm been this frenetic. From north to south, Nigerians, especially the youths, have turned the corner. They want to vote in the 2023 election. To vote, you must have a Permanent Voter Card (PVC). That’s the pass to the polling booth. No PVC, no access to the polling point. Many Nigerians, having lost hope in the electoral process these past years, now want to participate in the democratic recruitment process.
Some Nigerians have argued that the surge in interest among Nigerians to register for PVC so as to vote in the coming election was because they now have confidence in the electoral process. No. It’s not. Out in the streets, there still subsists a reasonable and justifiable quantum of pessimism on the readiness, impartiality and sincerity of INEC to conduct free, fair and credible election. Even as the queues of persons desiring to register for their PVC grow, so also is their pessimism on INEC living up to expectation.
Two factors triggered the passion of Nigerians to engage in the electoral process more than ever before. One is the Peter Obi factor. Obi, a former governor of Anambra, broke off from the behemoth Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to pitch with Labour Party, obviously a smaller party. All the factors are linked like a complex algebraic equation. More Nigerians are showing interest in election because Obi is on the ballot. Obi is on the ballot because picking the presidential ticket of the PDP was heavily monetized. The same over-valuation of presidential ticket was even more profound in the All Progressives Congress (APC) which had the obscene audacity of selling expression of interest and nomination forms for a criminally high N100 million.
The second factor is the pain inflicted on Nigerians these past seven years by a fumbling Muhammadu Buhari government. There is a song out there in the streets that suggests the youths of Nigeria are tired of Buhari and everything that represents him. The song likens APC’s seven years to the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt where they existed in the most insufferable conditions. The song calls Buhari ‘the father’ and Bola Tinubu, the APC standard bearer ‘the grandfather’. And it pales out with ‘we don’t want from father to grandfather’, an obvious dig at Tinubu’s frail frame and age (controversial, though).
That is the noise from the streets. A youth-driven momentum with a velocity that only compares with the #EndSARS movement of October, 2020. At the core of this movement is Peter Obi, perceived by many Nigerians as different from the rest. Obi has triggered a new high in voter enthusiasm and from the reports emanating from the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) centres, INEC is emitting signals that do not bode well for the elections. Yes, it’s commendable that INEC has deployed more machines to some CVR centres in some states but the fact that many Nigerians had to be made to go through some harrowing experience and yet could not register, advertised INEC as unprepared for the CVR exercise. Those who query why some Nigerians had to wait till the last minute to obtain their PVC miss the point. For as long as they turned up within the period announced by INEC for the exercise, there’s no excoriating them. Rather than blame the late-comers, we should rebuke INEC for not anticipating the surge and preparing for it. Anticipation is a critical element in project management. And perish the thought if you think that the voter enthusiasm is because Nigerians now have confidence in INEC. Never! To harbour such thought is to live in denial of the antecedents of the electoral umpire.
Commendably, INEC has been making efforts to upgrade the automation process for election. Once in this country, names like Michael Tyson, Michael Jackson and other ghost names suffused the voter register. This prompted a gradual and steady automation of the electoral process starting from the days of Professor Maurice Iwu as chairman. Direct Data Capture (DDC) machines were brought in to clean up the voter register. This transited to the introduction of the card reader and now the BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System). Yet, even with such commendable efforts at automation, human factors have conspired to make a mess of what ought to be a simple, seamless process of voter registration, casting, counting and tallying of ballots; and then announcing results. Ghana does it from time to time, seamlessly. Big, populous India does it, too!
So, why do Nigerians still not trust INEC? Here are few reasons: in 2019 election, INEC told Nigerians that results would be transmitted to its ‘Central Server.’ Mike Igini, a Resident Electoral Commissioner with INEC was on television ahead of the election to break down the mode of transmission of results, all terminating at the central server. But when the crunch hour came and there was the judicial need to interrogate the results transmitted to the INEC central server, the electoral body categorically dismissed the existence of any central server. Magic!
Again, in 2015, INEC insisted on the use of card readers only, assuring Nigerians of the integrity of the technical system. Nigerians, including this writer, gave a thumb up to INEC. But on the day of voting, the same INEC gave a counter directive to its officials in the north, advising them to discountenance the card reader and rely on manual voter register. It did not give similar directive to its officials in the South
Incumbent President Jonathan admitted this much and heavily indicted Attahiru Jega, then INEC Chairman, in his book, My Transition Hours. In Chapter Eight of that book, he wrote: “I had every reason to contest the results, starting from educational qualification for elections and electoral malpractices. These were the facts in my hands…
“Apparently, there were many instances of irregularities. There were series of problems with card readers, resulting from widespread technical hitches leading to non-uniform application throughout the country…”
These were the intelligence at the disposal of Jonathan before, during and after the election. He knew the election was not credible. He knew that the use of card reader was strictly enforced by Jega in the south but waived in the north. But he overlooked these flaws because in his opinion, he did not want to plunge the nation into a spasm of violence.
This is the sense in which, despite repeated assurances by INEC that the BVAS would frustrate electoral grifters, many Nigerians are still sceptical about the impartiality of INEC and its readiness to cope with the anticipated huge voter turnout this time round. The ball, truly, is in INEC’s court to prove sceptics wrong.