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4 minute read
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This sort of aggravating criminality was replicated across the length and breadth of Nigeria.
But one Electoral Commissioner refused to join the rigging train. Professor Nnenna Oti, (64), the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, acquitted herself creditably as the returning officer in Abia State. She is currently the toast of Nigeria’s honest flank. She was welcomed back to her university campus by enthusiastic thousands, with brass band, gospel music, dancing. She took the microphone:
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“I had never in my life participated in any election as an election officer. But duty came calling. I made my enquiries from Abuja and I said, ‘If I perish, I perish.’
They came with their threats. They came with their money. They came with their intimidation. I didn’t start today. [But I am unshakeable, she said in Igbo.] I stand here before God…Jesus Christ! I have never defrauded anyone. I stand here. I declared a riot act as follows: Under me, votes must count. Under me, the people’s mandate will be upheld. Because Professor Nnenna Oti, a mother of three children, the wife of Nnanna Oti, the daughter of Ibegbo, the daughter of Afikpo, the daughter of Ebonyi State, the daughter of Ndigbo, the daughter of Nigeria can never do evil.”
In contradistinction, civil society organisations have drawn up a list of 50 professors and Vice Chancellors who were also electoral commissioners but whose feeblest weakness turned out to be putting up resistance to the temptations of political buccaneers and entrepreneurs. Lawyers are being briefed to drag the entire shameless lot to tribunals to answer to charges of electoral malpractices.
Talking about the courts, the trendiest Nigerian imperative in the face of the sham elections is “Go to court!” Whoever felt their electoral mandate had been stolen was told to seek judicial redress. But it is not as straightforward as it seems. Any rogue unlawfully declared winner of a governorship poll would sit inside Government House and deploy government finances to buy up corrupt judges and favourable judgments. That explains the scant regard Nigerians now have for the judiciary. Countless dubious and baffling verdicts on election and election related matters have tumbled out of the courts. The Supreme Court, the highest seat of judicial arbitration and adjudication, is the most offending culprit in the desecration of justice. In 2020, it “elected” Hope Uzodimma as the Governor of Imo State by trashing an authentic INEC election result in which Uzodimma had come a distant fourth. The seven Supreme Court justices that delivered this horrendous amputation of common sense, natural justice and constitutional provisions were not embarrassed that, in cooking up figures to deliver Uzodimma in the Imo State Government House, the posted votes many times more than the number of registered voters!
That is not all. Alhaji Ahmad Lawan (Yobe North Senatorial District) is the President of the Nigerian Senate. He did not participate in the APC senatorial primary ballot for his constituency. He had his eye on the main deal – his party’s presidential ticket, which he lost woefully. He travelled post-haste to Yobe and demanded that Mr, Bashir Machina, who had won the senatorial primary, should surrender the ticket to him. Manchina refused. The Appeal Court sided with him. Senator Lawan fled to the Supreme Court, which instantly pronounced him the winner of the Yobe North APC senatorial primary in which he had not participated. He since “won” the senatorial election and would return to the National Assembly, presiding over the deliberations of the Upper Chamber. What society operates this terribly?
While the people wait to see whether the courts will redeem their battered and shattered image this time around, a more worrying issue is the perversity of the general elections. INEC introduced electronic voting which was sanctioned by the National Assembly and accented to Law by President Buhari. Electronic voting meant the usage of both the BVAS or Bimodal Voting Accreditation System, and the IReV or INEC Result Viewing Portal. The use of these machines was to ensure transparency. Once a voter’s intimidation, snatching of ballot boxes and the posting of fictitious election results across the country. details were captured, they got entitled to vote; once they voted, their vote registered on IReV, making manipulation of votes near impossible. But, on the presidential Election Day, both the BVAS and the IReV went inexplicably out of commission. Without warning, voting and collation of results returned to the primitivity of manual enumeration! This paved the way for vote buying, results fabrication, voter
Nigerians saw this unmitigated infamy, as did international observers and media organisations.
The worldwide negative reports on the general elections mean one thing: the N305 billion deployed into the sham was money tossed down the drain. Tinubu was not supposed to have been declared winner because the Nigerian Constitution states unambiguously that a presidential election winner must earn 25 percent of the votes cast in 24 of the 36 States and Abuja. Tinubu scored a miserable 19.76 percent of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. What will the courts say? The answer blows in the wind.
Meanwhile, demonstrations against Tinubu’s declaration as president-elect continue daily in Abuja and sporadically in other parts of the country. The national media is awash with misgivings. Still, the country continues its heedless march under Muhammadu Buhari. A national census is planned for May, which the government says will consume a colossal N869 billion, which is more than double what the sham elections gobbled. How could this be excusable for a country groaning under a crippling debt overhang of N44.06 trillion?
How could this be tolerated where there are no visible signs of readiness for the headcount? How could a divisive issue like national census take centre stage in the same month that the inception of a brand new administration is to take place? The rational are calling for the postponement of the exercise that would otherwise be an expensive farce. Who is going to pay attention?