From Charity Nwakaudu, Abuja
Ahead of the 2023 General Elections, the Speak Out Initiative has launched the Vote Buying Disruptors (VBD) to ensure credibility, accountability and transparency as the country prepares to vote for new leadership.
Speaking yesterday during the launch and activation of its #65 days of Civic Action to 2023 Elections held in Abuja, the Convener, Kenneth Ejiofor Eze noted that over time the country has harped on anti-democratic practices as big concerns and had made frantic efforts to plug the loopholes through technological innovations and hitherto, they have appeared stiff and unsolvable; hence the concept of the VBD, to unveil and proffer lasting and practical solutions.
Eze stated that the VBD will dislodge the proponents of vote-buying menace from the source and make it difficult even when electorates were willing to aid such a heinous act.
Saying that technology was key to the outcome of the 2023 General Elections, he said that questions to be answered by INEC, were, “why do voters have to perform accreditation and actual voting at different times? And What happens assuming voting activities are taken away to INEC unapproved location?”
He said, “Today, we make bold to say that there is light at the end of the tunnel as it relates to the 2023 General Election which is #65 Days away. It is Good News to the Nigerian electorate but Bad News for the desperate politicians!
“Nigerians can now rejoice for new dawn while they prevail on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the electoral umpire to absorb, implement and internalise the Vote Buying Disruptor (VBD) without fear or favour especially as Mr President Muhammed Buhari had just this week reinforced that the INEC has no excuse nor reason to fail Nigerians in delivering Free, Fair, Credible and Acceptable election outcome.
“For a while, INEC had over time harped on these anti-democratic practices as big concerns and had made frantic efforts to plug the loopholes through technological innovations like BVAS, Electronic Transmission of Results, iRev portal, stakeholders’ meetings and Voter Education and hitherto, they appear stiff and unsolvable; – a more reason that propelled us as an organisation to think outside the box and we are here to unveil the solutions.
“Great citizens and election stakeholders, we all can now see for ourselves that INEC’s job/task has been made simple and Nigerians expect her to swing into action and leave no stone unturned. The solutions are now with us, and the constitutional power has been provided in the 2022 new electoral act with Mr. president charging the INEC not to disappoint the Nigerian people.
“It now behoves us to activate the office of the Citizen as we kick start 65DaysOfCivicActionTo2023Election to call on all lovers of democracy, development partners, CSOs, Media and international communities to prevail on INEC to salvage our democracy. We must ensure the electoral umpire keeps and adhere to her own guidelines even as pressure is being mounted on her not to deliver her mandate. We must give them footing to land safely.
“Hence, this intervention: Launch of Vote buying Disruptor (VBD).”
Making recommendations for success at the 2023 polls, he pointed out that INEC should provide, “the Voting Cubicle Reform (VCR) which is to review and ensure vote thumbprint, as well as casting, is done simultaneously inside the same cubicle as against short-spaced distance always provided which gives an opportunity for votes thumb printed to be ‘seen, viewed and verified’ by the bystander buyers while transiting to being cast into the ballot box, for the purpose of cashing out as no politicians will give out money if he/she cannot verify he was actually voted for.
“We recommend for simultaneous accreditation and actual voting be done at the same time as against performing accreditation and staying back to cast voter at a later time. This will curb invading of polling units after voters’ have concluded accreditations and the process manipulated.
“We recommend BVAS Location Tracker (BLT) which will detect if any voting action takes place in different locations aside from configured exact location. This will stop thugs who invade the polling units from carting away ballot boxes to an unknown different location, thereby making the polling unit result invalid.”
He stressed that one major driver for violence and security breaches at the polling units during elections even with the deployment of all security apparatus is the fact that no one was held accountable and sanctioned urging that the President and INEC must hold officers accountable for actions perpetuated under their jurisdiction if voters must enjoy security at the booth.
He also called for Security Agents’ Encryption (SAE) which will encrypt any assigned security agents to polling units and be held accountable for security lapses and vote buying.
“The Nigeria police through the Inspector General of Police should make each officer assigned public in their portal, newspapers, polling units and INEC website with appropriate penalties spelt out. In addition, this will stop the invasion of fake security officers impersonating at the polling units even without proper identification by INEC officials themselves,” he stated.
He explained that voters suppression has taken a new dimension hence urgent attention much be given to tackling it headlong and nipping it in the bud saying that, “we have identified about three (3) ways voters can be suppressed namely: Voting-Time Constraint (VTC), PVCs Uncollection (PU) and Buying of PVCs and the remedies. At the end, we shall dismantle voter suppression enablers (VSE).
“On Voting-Time Constraint (VTC): In Kenya’s recent election, the election management body: Independent Electoral Boundary Commission (IEBC) commenced voting from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m on election day for 22 million registered Kenyans which is about 11 solid hours and yet the result was announced timely.
“So why will our own INEC voting time on election day be just from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm which is just 6 hours for a teeming over 80 million registered eligible Nigerian voters with the newly registered voters? That alone has a tendency to suppress voters as they will be suffocated with rush and many will be disenfranchised.
He also stressed that on Voting-Time Extension (VTE), INEC should review their election guidelines and extend the voting time to give room for more Nigerian voters not to miss out due to voting time suffocation. Thus, we recommend from 2:00 am to 4:00 pm.
“On PVCs Uncollection (PU): The ongoing permanent voters’ card collection has not been encouraging and falls below the expectations of Nigerians. The unpleasant situation seen in many states vis-a-vis the short time deadline does not portray INEC as working the talk.
“We call on INEC to recruit more hands like youth corps members to assist in PVCs distribution since the same people are used as ad hoc staff during elections. Secondly, we recommend PVC collection scheduling (PCS) to INEC to ensure PVCs collectors are scheduled for their collections which will prevent overcrowding, and disenfranchisement and ease the process at collection centres,” he further explained.
He further called on President Muhammed Buhari to walk the talk and give a matching order to the IGP of police and NSCDC to encrypt all security personnel participating in elections and ensure any misconduct are punished to safeguard the democracy he enjoys.
He condemned in strong terms the anti-democratic act of destroying INEC facilities across the country pleading with those involved to stop such dastard acts.