What Nigerians have witnessed in the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections and the March 18 governorship and state House of Assembly election was not an election in the true sense of the word. It was a war declared against the people of Nigeria by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and their collaborators in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agencies.
Why should you call it an election when security agents watched as Nigerians who came out to vote were brutalized by the thugs of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos and many other parts of the country. Similar thing played out in Rivers State where the governor was accused by the opposition in the state of unleashing terror on their supporters and was also blamed for the snatching of ballot papers and Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and rewriting results.
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The early sign that the 2023 general election will end badly despite all the promises that it would be the best ever by the INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu was the late arrival of materials to the polling units on Election Day on February 25 especially in the South East that is perceived to be the stronghold of the presidential candidate of Labour Party (PDP) Peter Obi and thus was seen as calculated attempt to disenfranchise his support base. However, despite the INEC shenanigan the people of South East waited patiently to cast their votes, while many to this day never cast their votes because they waited in vain for the INEC officials to show up.
Aside the late arrival of election materials and INEC officials the process was marred by violence and intimidation, bribery and corruption, the worst this country has ever seen since 1999. To make matters worse INEC failed to follow the Electoral Act 2022 on electronic transmission of results which had been the driving force behind the surge in new voters’ registration in the country. The anger of the people was exacerbated when the same BVAS that could transmit the Senatorial and House of Representatives result to the INEC IReV portal could not upload the presidential election results. Many had seen this as a deliberate ploy by the INEC and the APC to rig the presidential election. Further developments in the country have now reinforced that view.
The former minister of transportation and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, on Saturday revealed that a member of the camp of the president-elect, Senator Bola Tinubu, nominated the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu, for his reappointment for a second term. After voting in his hometown, Ubima Ward 8 Unit 14, Amaechi expressed dissatisfaction with the polling, decrying what he called a total failure of governance in Nigeria.
He stated that his party did not contest against the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state but against the INEC and the police.
According to him, Yakubu also worked with the Rivers State Governor, Mr Nyesom Wike, when the Rivers governor was the Minister of State for Education with the INEC boss as the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND).
From the narration by the chieftain of APC it is obvious that Yakubu was not ready to conduct free and fair elections ab initio. It has also called into question the results that INEC has delivered under Yakubu, especially the presidential election which Yakubu hastily declared Tinubu president-elect even when Tinubu did not meet the constitutional requirement of getting 25 per cent of the total valid votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Section 134 and section 2b of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria states that candidate for an election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly elected where, there being more than two candidates for the election- (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and (b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election each of at least two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Tinubu did not get 25 per cent of votes cast in Abuja and ought not to have been declared president-elect but for the cozy relationship between him and the INEC chairman. Similarly, the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Alhaji Atiku Abubakar did not get 25 percent in Abuja. The only presidential candidate that met the constitutional requirement with regards to Abuja is the presidential candidate of Labour Party who got 62 percent of total valid votes cast in Abuja.
Similarly, there were other infractions in the election which the Electoral Act 2022 provided a window of about 14 days to look into them before declaring the president-elect which was not followed by INEC chairman for obvious reasons. That is why it is fair for us to call what we had in this so-called 2023 General Election a war between the people and the antidemocratic forces.
Of course, there should be consequences for what happened. Those that bastardized and perpetrated evil against our electoral process including the INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu, the presidential candidate of APC Bola Tinubu, governor of Rivers State Nyesom Wike, former governor of Abia State Orji Uzor Kalu, security agents and many others should be made to answer for the war they declared against Nigerian people.
–from the Editorial Desk UNITY TIMES