2023 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CRISES, HOW THE DEBACLE OF INEC WILL BE RESOLVED
By Nnamdi Onochie
INEC was not publicly seized , nor could it warn itself that it would bring NIGERIA to a point of near total collapse, at dawn on February 26, 2023, on the Presidential Election it conducted the previous day. For the Independent Electoral Commission had informed all Nigerians, and invited the world to visit, observe and see how well it had prepared, to hold the elections successfully, for more than 48 months. Billions of Naira spent, thousands of man-hours dedicated to moving NIGERIA forward on that scheduled date. Yet, the dark clouds gathered ominously, and the weather was notably in-clementine that Saturday, February 25, 2023, because millions of Nigerian voters stayed in the rains, insistent on undertaking their patriotic duties of voting to replace their leaders: Nigerians had never suffered before in the history of the country, as they have suffered in the past 8 years, especially in the last 21 days, leading to this Presidential debacle. INEC, led by Mahmoud Yakubu, has shot itself in the foot, and the center of NIGERIA can no longer hold. How can we redeem ourselves from this political and electoral strangle-hold?
FURTHER ANALYSIS
In making the decision to modernize and improve the electoral system, Government using INEC, was preparing NIGERIA, from the organic pressures of modernism and futurism that has been the impulse of the youths and the times. Economically the country had suffered the recession of 2015-2017, which included galloping inflation, highest ever unemployment rate and insecurity/ violence based on religion and ethnicity. In another vein, SEPARATISM had encased the country due to social and constitutional imbalances that poisoned perceptions and dispositions of the massive populations of the country: corruption, nepotism, cronyism and elite insensitivity had eaten deep into the fabric of the country’s polity. When CORVID-19 struck, in the 1st quarter of 2020, it bottled up social energy in the system, that soon was let out by the #END SARS of October 20-22, 2020, that became the harbinger and announcer of future youth upheavals in NIGERIA. Then, the separatist agitations that followed the long demands to RESTRUCTURE Nigeria, which opened up the newer gale of social-ethnic violence that has encapsulated NIGERIA, preparing her for the General Elections of 2023. Early in March 2021, as a 2023 PDP Presidential Aspirant, I consulted with Pa Ayo Adebanjo, Afenifere Leader; he vehemently objected to the holding of the due General Elections of 2023, without the Restructuring of NIGERIA. I warned that President Muhamadu Buhari, PMB, would fund INEC, and once funded, no one could stop the Elections from being conducted. I was proved right, but in the last 24 hours, the high agitations of voters and honest citizens, have now stopped INEC and the Federal Government, from concluding and announcing a winner of the highly rigged, corrupted and indefensible Presidential election. The heat wave of agitations, as well as public dissent, has descended again on NIGERIA. Last night, at midnight, I called for the SUSPENSION of the INEC Chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu, and his closest publicly known aide, Festus Okoye, both indefinitely from participating in the conclusion of the the remainder of the 2023 Presidential/General Elections: Government must rapidly consider and determine this position. Anything short of it will exacerbate the already combustible situation in the country. The youths of Nigeria, and the world, are watching.
SOLUTIONS ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBACLE
To act as though the situation is simple and can be remedied, using the current structures in INEC is to misjudge what has already happened, with respect to the Presidential Election of 25/02/2023. The duo of Mahmoud Yakubu and Festus Okoye, should not be sacked. They should proceed on indefinite suspension/leave instantly, while Government trajects as follows:
1. Appoint two (2) active retired Justices to take immediate control of INEC, and unbundle the morass around the now stalled Presidential election.
2. Government instant policy must be to STOP the continuation of the Collation of the Presidential election of 25/02/2023, due to widespread failure of the use of BVAS & IREV, in transmitting completed election results from the polling units, to the wards, LGAs, States, onward to the National Collation Center, NCC: INEC must return submitted election results, not uploaded electronically, for due re-processing, and uploaded transmission, by its staff at all the State Offices, in concertation with accredited Party Agents, in the next ten (10), days: BVAS/IREV standardized operations must be publicly acknowledged during all the steps of this re-processing of all Presidential election results.
3. Polling units, or designated INEC offices, centers, towns or cities, where election materials had been tampered with, removed, snatched, burnt, altered, tipexed, or where violence, maimings, looting or deaths had taken place, must be cancelled, rescheduled and repeated, prior uploading to the NCC.
4. In the event of a totally failed uploading of results, approval and authorization to transmit manually, must be obtained by the States, from INEC Headquarters.
5. INEC must continually open the NCC, once Collation has commenced, using flexible scheduling of senior Offices, until Collation is successfully concluded, and the FINAL declaration of the winner is made. The practice of stopping and re-starting COLLATIONS must be stopped forthwith.
6. The scheduling of the Governorship and House of Assembly Elections 2023, should be the next Saturday, following the FINAL declaration of the duly elected President, to allow no less than 6-working days.
7. Additional Supplementary budget, for INEC should be sent to the National Assembly, by the Presidency, whilst the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, funds the new needs of the Commission using Government Bonds and Certificates, approved by the Federal Ministry of Finance.
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES OF AVOIDABLE ELECTORAL PITFALLS
To reject the proposals outlined above, will expose Nigeria to the following dire consequences:
a. Instant or delayed electoral violence, carnage and unwarranted loss of human lives, and incalculable losses in national and private assets and man-hours.
b. Incipience of renewed agitations for the breakup of the country, based on perceived margins of participation/leadership of Nigeria, in the polity, Constitutional imbalances and inequalities.
c. Unexpected youth and student agitations, on sundry matters that confronted the Nigerian polity, such as funding of education/University/ Medical sectors.
CONCLUSION
The routine manner of dealing with Election disputes in Nigeria, is to conclude and declare a winner, and ask all dissatisfied contenders to proceed to the Courts. The instant case and situation has been altered by Sections 30 and 60.2. of the 2022 Electoral Law. The remedies to complaints in the Law are applied, prior the continuation of the process of Collation and the declaration of a winner: to deny, denigrate or overlook this is to plot for social and political problems, which can be avoided by patience and following the letter and spirit of the Electoral Law 2022.
In last 10-12 years Nigeria has been over-burdened by violence, ethnic and religious hatred, and economic problems that have worsened the standard of living of the average citizens. Hardships have become so endemic, that it would be wrong to add any new problems, to what is now the trajectory of the country. It can only be ill afforded, and there are greater paths of glory, growth and prosperity for the Nigerian populace. Government must move all the citizens forward, and spare us further dissension and turbulence.
PMB must preserve also his place permanently in history, by seeking a political solution over this grave electoral situation.
To crack down on any Nigerians, based on expressed sympathies regarding this Presidential election of 2023, is to miss where INEC defaulted itself.
LONG LIVE THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!
Signed:
Dr. Orefo Nnamdi Onochie.
Convener/ Chairman NACOPPIN.
