EU, INEC, and the rest of us- By Kassim Afegbua
There is too much hypocrisy and pretentiousness in Nigeria; especially amongst those who are apparently holier than thou. Just last week, tongues were agog about President Tinubu’s convoy in Lagos; but when Peter Obi’s convoy was shown on social media, Obi hurriedly deleted his initial tweet in which he also, condemned the president’s convoy; sheer hypocrisy!
Another: former President Buhari has now practically “relocated” to London, as a way of staying beyond the reach of those who may want to lobby him for patronage in President Tinubu’s government; thereby wanting to paint a self-portrait that gives him off as an austere persona. I heard he has returned home nonetheless. Albeit I am unable to reconcile that with his present ostentatious adventure in far away United Kingdom. Yet another hypocrisy! Nigeria Air was supposedly established by one Hadi Sirika, the former Minister of Aviation.
He whitewashed one of Ethiopian Airlines’ airplanes with the bogus inscription, Nigeria Air. He wanted to hoodwink hapless citizenry that his ministry did a yeoman’s job by gifting us Nigeria Air. He even boldly came out to accuse a member of the National Assembly of asking for “shares” or gratification to see through the whole transaction. If Hadi Sirika knows the culture of shame, he would have hidden his head in his massive mansion in Katsina, to allow us some respite. He came out and poohpoohed the whole idea by sheer accusation.
He was one of the favoured ministers of former President Buhari; the loved few who pretended that they were serving the country. Sheer hypocrisy!!.
Those are just snippets of who we truly are. The global conspiracy that was let loose like unfurling clouds before and during the election was captured in graphic details by the European Union–EU–so-called report. They were all working from answer to question, with a mindset to provoking a paradigm shift in who sits as the elected president. A lot of those organisations that came around in the name of election observers, had ulterior motives; but President Tinubu’s destiny conquered almost all their invidious plots and he came out victorious at the end of the day. I can argue with all certainty, that the 2023 General Election remains the best in the history of elections in Nigeria since 1999. It was an election that sprung up so many surprises; even to the consternation of bookmakers. Those who masterminded Opinion Polls and churned out dubious statistics and predictions were soundly beaten when it was all done. Those polls are most probably where the EU got a chunk of the content in its report from; they didn’t have observers in the 176,974 polling units across the country. They wrote a report that tended to suggest that they are more of our electoral body than the INEC, the institutional body vested with election conduct in Nigeria. In the 2023 election, and even now in the Presidential Tribunal following, both Obi and Atiku have left what they initially boasted of as their strength, to start chasing shadows. The witnesses they all boastfully assured their supporters of presenting to the tribunal, have all been abandoned to chase hemlock for want of compelling evidence to convince the Tribunal. They have now abandoned the crux of the matter, failed to present the much touted witnesses, and have ended up chasing pre-election issues that are neither here nor there.
The INEC unfortunately, has been the punching bag of so many political commentators who are hell-bent on calling it, like the proverbial dog, a bad name; in order to hang it. The INEC, with all due sense of responsibility, inspired a lot of Nigerians by the election outcome and conduct by the electoral body. It was the first time in Nigeria that seven sitting governors lost their bids to enter the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly.
This was almost unfathomable, knowing full well how difficult it had been in the past for governors to lose their bids in their senatorial districts. This time was different; the BIVAS made this last election a bit more difficult for anyone to manipulate. Those who are crying blue murder, claiming manipulated elections, most probably didn’t have the requisite number of party polling agents to supervise and superintend over the election process across the country.
They didn’t do their job!!! Their insistence on an iREV upload of results exposed their lack of the requisite skill and know-how for the elections. To escape, they started shouting “crucify INEC” just to cover their ineptitude. Did the Labour Party have full-scale party polling agents?
The answer is No. Now that it is time to prove their allegations of manipulations, both Obi and Atiku are clutching at flotsam to stay afloat. They are chasing pre-election issues and have left the real issue on the shelf. Where are Mr. Obi’s witnesses? Where are Atiku’s witnesses? Is it possible that they now realize that all that initial braggadocio was a fluke?
Realizing that they cannot prove their case of rigging, beyond a reasonable doubt, to warrant a substantial effect on the outcome of the election, they are going after PBAT’s qualification. Jokers!!!
In election Tribunal cases, the losers’ cases are very often difficult cases to prove; especially when they are unable to establish the nexus of the reservations and observed lapses. Also, the question often asked is whether or not those observed lapses would have substantially affected the final outcome of the election. If the Labour Party were to be serious with their petition, within two weeks, just two weeks, they ought to have presented overwhelming evidence to establish their grouse with the election. In as many as twenty-one days, they only succeeded in presenting thirteen witnesses, who for the most part came up with bogus, contradictory and unsubstantiated statistics of why they think Mr. Obi or Mr. Atiku should be declared winners. They tacitly avoided their own stronghold where they “profited” from manipulations, and concentrated on places where they thought they could alter the outcome for President Bola Tinubu. Sadly, based on the noisy nature of their supporters, particularly in the social media, the European Union most probably drew its conclusions in writing its report; drawing conclusions from interested parties who have issues with the electoral outcome. Rather than crucify the electoral body and her chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, I feel very strongly that the electoral body should be highly commended. While there are no perfect elections anywhere in the world, not even those that are conducted using technology, which are still replete with avoidable errors, like we may have seen in February, INEC’s chairman has shown a solemn comportment before, during and after the election, a comportment that is suggestive of his conviction that the election surpassed substantial compliance to the rules and expectations; thereby making this last election credible, free and fair.
President Tinubu has set sail, and on a good note too. These petitions are deliberate distractions being promoted by hypocrites; that are intended to derail the smooth sail of his leadership. The elections might have suffered imperfections, but they are not enough to vitiate the outcome of the election in general. Our politicians must learn to accept outcomes of election in the larger interest of the country instead of dwelling on frivolities to rubbish whatever progress we have made in our electoral engagement. There is too much of individualism each time we file out to elect our leaders. Rather than look at the bigger picture in the overall interest of the country, and sustain standards that would deepen our democratic practice, individuals are often goaded into throwing away the baby with the bath water, just because an outcome does not favour their parochial interest. The EU cannot decide for us how we intend to govern ourselves or the process of electing our leaders. The EU can only play their role as observers. Also, to glean substantially in the future, they must spread their personnel across the country; because their personnel are often few, their report cannot be all encompassing. The EU did not send observers to many places on election day. Their report is at best, a product of hearsay and subjective analysis of what they perceived must have gone wrong. It is just a perception that cannot be scientifically proven and cannot be corroborated. As a nation trying to improve on its democratic practice to deepen democracy, it will take the conduct of several elections to get our acts together, especially as now, technology like BVAS and iREV are involved.
What we truly need to get our democracy on the true path of inclusivity and robust engagement on a wider scale, is a complete attitudinal re-orientation and voter education. A man and a party that could not supply the requisite number of party agents during election cannot rely on iREV to play that role for him. Party agents are guaranteed under the law to have a copy of polling results duly certified at the point of voting. Those results are often compiled by the party to arrive at the overall outlook of the election with the spread of votes from all the polling booths in view. When a party is unable to fulfil this electoral requirement like the Labour Party was, only to start shouting about the iREV and lack of upload, it is clear that they are trying to be clever by half. Any serious minded political party that boasts of being popular on ground, ought to supply party agents to closely monitor the elections in the various polling units across the country. The Labour Party failed in that duty, woefully! Now it is making noise about results being doctored. How did it arrive at such a conclusion when it didn’t have agents on ground in those areas under contention? Atiku, Obi and other litigants must shun relying on reports from foreign bodies to make an impression about our election; they had the opportunity to provide more credible reports through their agents. This resort to cheap blackmail and voice-over lamentations will not generate new results; there won’t be any results different from what party agents got for their respective parties. The election of 2023 has been won and lost, on the basis of fairness and equitability. The actors know this. They are aware they do not have strong grounds to upturn the outcome; hence they now focus on pre-election issues of qualification, instead of establishing the issues of manipulations that formed the nucleus of their litigation initially. They are as unsure as their witnesses have shown in the Tribunal. They are bunch of hypocrites running amok to grab at substance. They have no scruples.
