Omoniyi Salaudeen and Onyedika Agbedo
The successful conclusion of the Presidential and National Assembly elections appears to have restored some degree of confidence in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The electoral umpire suffered credibility crisis after the initial disappointment experienced by Nigerians in the wake of postponement of the polls earlier scheduled for February 16. Citing logistical challenges and barrage of court cases brought against it by political parties as its reasons for the action; the INEC had announced the postponement in the early hours of the Election Day, a development that sparked off sharp criticisms from both within and outside the country.
The election later held on February 23. Although there were few skirmishes and technical hitches occasioned by the failure of the Smart Card Readers in some polling units, the process has been adjudged to be generally peaceful, free, fair and credible by both domestic and international observers.
Not unexpectedly, since the INEC declared the results, President Muhammadu Buhari, who emerged the winner of the presidential election, has been inundated with messages of congratulations and goodwill from the international community, notably the United States and the UK, among others.
According to the electoral body, Buhari scored a total of 15,191,847 votes to beat Abubakar Atiku, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, who garnered 11,262,978 votes.
But in his response to the declaration, Atiku has vowed not to concede defeat to Buhari, saying he would challenge the result in court.
He said: “If I had lost in a free and fair election, I would have called the victor within seconds of my being aware of his victory to offer not just my congratulations, but my services to help unite Nigeria by being a bridge between the North and the South.
“However, in my democratic struggles for the past three decades, I have never seen our democracy so debased as it was on Saturday, February 23, 2019. 2007 was a challenge, but President Yar’Adua was remorseful. In 2019, it is sad to see those who trampled on democracy thumping their noses down on the Nigerian people.
“Consequently, I hereby reject the result of the February 23, 2019 sham election and will be challenging it in court.
“I want to assure my supporters and the entire Nigerian people that together, we will not allow democracy to be emasculated.”
One of the grounds of his rejection is the alleged disruption and suppression of voting in areas he described as his strongholds. He added: “One obvious red flag is the statistical impossibility of states ravaged by the war on terror generating much higher voter turnouts than peaceful states. The suppressed votes in my strongholds are so apparent and amateurish, that I am ashamed as a Nigerian that such could be allowed to happen. How can total votes in Akwa-Ibom, for instance, be 50 per cent less than what they were in 2015?
“Another glaring anomaly is the disruption of voting in strongholds of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos, Akwa-Ibom, Rivers and diverse other states, with the authorities doing little or nothing and in some cases facilitating these unfortunate situations.
“The militarization of the electoral process is a disservice to our democracy and a throwback to the jackboot era of military dictatorship. In some areas of the country, such as, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Imo states, troops deployed for the elections turned their guns on the very citizens they were meant to protect. This is condemnable and should not be associated with our electoral process in the future.”
Available statistics showed that the Northwest had the highest number of registered voters with a total of 20,158,100, representing 24 per cent of the overall 84,004,084 voters for the entire country. This is followed by the Southwest region with 16,292,212 registered voters (19.39%), while the North-central has 13,366,070 registered voters (15.91%), and the South-south has 12,841,279 registered voters (15.29%). The Northeast region and the Southeast region come last with the total number of registered voters with 11,289,293 (13.44%) and 10,057,130 voters (11.97%) respectively.
The INEC’s Director of Voter Register, Iro Gambo, who revealed the figures shortly before the election, further submitted that Lagos and Kano states have the highest number of registered voters with 6.6 million and 5.5 million respectively.
In the results released by the electoral body, APC recorded victory in 15 Northern states and lost to PDP in Adamawa, Plateau and Benue and Taraba states with a narrow margin. The party also secured the highest vote count in four out of the six states in the Southwest, while the whole of South-south and Southeast went in the way of the opposition PDP.
Except for a few states like Oyo, Ondo, Plateau and Adamawa, which were narrowly lost to the PDP, the distribution of the voting pattern in this election is almost consistent with the victory recorded by Buhari in the 2015 general elections.
A prominent Northern politician, Junaid Muhammed, speaking with Sunday Sun on the matter, said the result of the Presidential and National Assembly elections was a reflection of people’s dissatisfaction and acceptance of the state gladiators.
His words: “I don’t find it surprising. It is an indication of the level of dissatisfaction with those in power and lack of acceptance of the opposition. For instance, the Governor of Gombe has lost his aspiration to go to the Senate. I don’t know what the people of Adamawa did. But if Atiku won in Adamawa, it must have been with a very narrow margin. The fact remains that the voting pattern reflects the way these characters have served the people.
“In the South-south, where Amaechi in claiming to be the leader of the APC, he has handled the situation there very badly. And that is what affected the volume of votes the APC recorded in that region. For the Southeast region which is shouting of 2023, they have already soiled their hands in this election. They want to get the presidency in their own terms. Unfortunately, they do not have the critical mass to impose their wish on anybody. They put all their votes in one basket. But when you look at the reality on ground, how many votes do they have? Kano alone will deliver more than half of the total votes from the five states of the Southeast. The samething Kaduna.
“Democracy is simply a game of number. Put all eleven states in the South-south and Southeast together, three or four states in the North-Kano, Kaduna, Katsina and Sokoto or Maiduguri- will beat their votes. The aspiration of Igbo for 2023 presidency is dead on arrival. In fact, it died before it arrived.”
Muhammed further berated Atiku for rejecting the result of the election, saying he lacks moral credibility to criticise the process, especially given the circumstance of his emergence. “The PDP’s complaint that the election has been rigged is pure shamelessness because for you to complain that something has gone wrong, you have to make a clear case of what happened where with a weight of evidence you can use in court. They haven’t done that. They have made up their minds. If they win, it is okay. If they don’t win, the election is not free and fair. They are so crude. And when you look at what they did in their last primary in Port Harcourt, dollars and euros were used openly to buy delegates. How can they now come and talk about the credibility of an election? If there was credibility, Atiku would not have emerged,” he declared.
The National Leader of the UPP, Chief Checkwas Okorie, in his own analysis, blamed the low margin of victory recorded by the PDP in the Southeast on the inability of the Igbo to travel home for the election.
He also debunked the claim by Atiku that the APC used military to suppress voting in his stronghold, adding that “under the present circumstance, we don’t have any voice.
“If the military had not been deployed as effectively as they have been deployed, this country would have been in flames by now.
“Everybody knows that they are strong in the Southeast and they won. No election can be compared to this election in terms of transparency and credibility.
“Many people especially Igbo travelled home during registration of voters. But at this particular time, with the economic situation, not many people thought it was worthwhile to travel back home to go and vote. And you can see the impact in less than 30 per cent participation. When we go back to electronic voting, then people can vote in any part of the country. All the risk involved in moving around will also be eliminated.”
The Spokesperson of the Buhari Campaign Organisation, Festus Keyamo, corroborating Okorie’s submission, maintained that percentage voting in the Southeast and South-south had always remained between 28 or 30 per cent.
He said: “This result should not shock anybody. Traditionally, it has always been like that. Northwest records 40 to 45 turn out of registered voters. Northeast, the same thing. They have that average record all the time. Southeast and South-south have a record of low turnout. On the average, they record 28 to 30 per cent of register turn out.
“So, the results from the stronghold of Mr President are just consistent with what he has always been earning since 2003. I come from South-south. I am an Uhrobo boy; elections have not been taking place in the South-south. Nobody can come and sit down in front of me and tell me that they have been holding elections in my state. They have been writing results. But in this election, they prevented them from writing results as usual. They have lost fair and square. They are bellyaching as we if they don’t know the trend in this country.”
One of the close associates of President Buhari, Prince Tony Momoh, while not denying some technical hiccups experienced in some polling centres during the election, said the process was more credible than the previous ones.
“If there was anything untoward, it will not be in the elaborate way we had it over the years. You know over the years we were writing up results routinely. Look at the South-south and Southeast, Buhari did not score a lot, but in the whole of the South South, he had 25 per cent; even more than 25 per cent in some of the states. In the whole of the Southeast, he had 25 per cent in three out of five states. In 2015, apart from Edo State where Buhari had 46 per cent of the votes cast, in other parts of the South-south and Southeast, he had less than 300,000 votes. He didn’t get 10 per cent votes anywhere in those states.
“Now, outside the traditional areas of support, he had a spread in the South-south and Southeast. He had 25 per cent in 35 states and Abuja. If you say you are going to conduct elections in the North, there is no way anybody will beat Buhari in the traditional North. That’s the truth!
“In this election, there was opportunity for people to vote rather than write up result, which had been happening before. Buhari told everybody, ‘do not rig for me because in 2003 I complained; in 2007, I complained; in 2011, I complained. I don’t want to do what I was complaining about. If I do it, God won’t forgive me.’ So, if there was any rigging, go and find out who did the rigging through money. For instance, I spoke with someone recently and got to know that the ruling party earmarked N14 million for all the wards in Abuja for the election but the other party was spending N10 to N11 million per ward in Abuja. They had money all over the place; we didn’t have money.
“So, what I’m saying is that there is no day you will conduct election in Buhari’s northern traditional strongholds, which has even expanded to the South that he won’t win,” he declared.
Regardless, Atiku has vowed to challenge the Buhari’s re-election in court.
And legal experts say, the onus of proof lies on the petitioner. According to Femi Falana, “Atiku’s chances of claiming the people’s mandate in court is tough.”