The March 11, 2023 governorship and House of Assembly elections will be witnessing widespread voter apathy as Nigerians across geo-political divide have vowed not to waste their time again since their votes do not count as a protest to the shenanigans that trailed the 2023 presidential election
By Udoka Ekeleme, Abuja
Nigerians have said they would never forget in a jiffy the shenanigans that derailed the February 25, 2023 presidential and National Assembly election. According to an opinion poll conducted by Tentacle on voter motivation, the outcome showed clearly that the Saturday, March 11, 2023 governorship and states House of Assembly election will inevitably contend with drastically reduced voters turnout compared with that of the presidential election.
Millions of Nigerians had turned out in droves to besiege their polling units in their quest to cast their votes for their preferred presidential and National Assembly candidates. Their enthusiasm to go out to carry out their civic responsibility was not unconnected with the promise made by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deploy its newly acquired Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines to transmit real time election results from the polling units to the INEC Result Verification (IREV) portal which would be open to all and sundry to log into and view the results of election as conducted from the polling units.
The insistent of INEC to deploy these technologies in the conduct of the 2023 general election is not without some precedents. Earlier, in 2021, INEC had deployed voter accreditation and result transmission online from polling units with the aid of the BVAS in the governorship election of Anambra State in which Prof. Chukwuma Soludo emerged winner. The Anambra guber poll was adjudged free, fair and credible by independent election observers.
Similarly, in 2022, two off-cycle state guber elections were conducted by the INEC in Ekiti and Osun States, respectively. INEC had also used the BVAS machines in voter accreditation in both states which helped to eliminate cases of thumb printing, ballot box snatching, over-voting, under age voting and other electoral vices because only the accredited voters were allowed to vote. Consequently, Nigerians had begun to put a little confidence in the capacity of the INEC to ably and patriotically conduct a credible 2023 elections without hitches.
Furthermore, the signing of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill (2022) into law by President Muhammadu Buhari helped in building confidence in the electorate that the elections of 2023 may come out better than previous years’ elections. To cement its commitment to free, fair and credible elections in 2023, INEC had allegedly sought and engaged the services of its former Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Akwa Ibom State, Mike Igini to use the media to convince the electorate that with the use of the BVAS technology which proved successful in the three states off-cycle elections, there was full assurance that INEC would conduct a convincing free and fair election.
In his continuous voter education campaign to arouse public sympathy and trust in INEC, Igini’s message sounded: “I’ve never been as optimistic as I am today concerning the processes given the fact that we now have a new electoral law that has secured INEC processes and procedures so that the Nigerian people are now at the centre of our democracy. That is the reason why people are desperate to obtain voters card. The optimism about people who have determined to make a change, to sing a new song is natural.”
Also remarkably, the Buhari government’s implementation of the naira redesign policy which drastically reduced the quantity of money in circulation was considered the government’s strategy to reduce incidences of vote buying by politicians. This, also, built confidence in the electorate that INEC would conduct an election that would be accepted by majority of Nigerians. However, the Saturday, February 25 elections, even though they had come and gone, have continued to remain a source of worry, pain, cursing and regrets on the part of most Nigerians and the international community.
The shenanigans that greeted the 2023 presidential election started with the alleged disenfranchisement of numerous voters who flocked the polling units. INEC officers came to the polling units between 10:30 and midday. Some INEC officers claimed they had no logistics to conduct the election and in some places election was cancelled while in others voting lasted till 2 am the following day. At some polling units, thugs attacked voters in the presence of security operatives, while thumb printing of ballot papers raged.
Whereas the BVAS machines were in some places used for accreditation of voters, in diverse other places accreditation was done manually. Inexplicably, INEC is yet to tell the electorate and election observers why the technology was not used to transmit results from the polling units to the commission’s server. This necessitated INEC collation of election results manually even though such exercise contravened the provisions of the Electoral Act.
There was an allegation that the INEC Chair, Mahmood Yakubu had visited Bola Tinubu in his Burdillion, Ikoyi, Lagos home conveyed with the latter’s private jet from Abuja in the wee hours of February 25 for yet-to-be-known purpose. In Ekiti State, there was over voting which reflected glaringly in the manually collated result despite the BVAS accreditation. In Rivers State, the voice over of governor Nyesom Wike instructing local government chairmen in the state to compel INEC officers to compromise election result in the favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC), could be heard circulating on the social media, allegedly.
Most regretting of all these electoral heist was the indifference of the over 400,000 security officials deployed to maintain law and order during the election. These incidences of electoral malpractices and offences committed brazenly by INEC and its officials were cemented by the commission’s adamant announcement of Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election amid protests by Nigerians across geopolitical zones who felt that the election was more or less a daylight robbery.
Nigerians are not happy. Their wishes and aspirations for the presidential election have been destroyed. Before now Nigerians had been showing voter apathy to elections because of the perception that their votes will not make a meaning to the INEC. The secret and manual collation of the 2023 presidential election which has allegedly falsified the results in favour of Tinubu, has once again turned off the enthusiasm of the Nigerian electorate for voting.
Tentacle’s opinion poll revealed that the coming governorship and House of Assembly elections are going to witness unprecedented voter apathy. Over 80 percent of the respondents, mostly youths and young adults in the South west, South east and South south regions, said they would not step out of the house on March 11 until 6 pm when they would be sure that the whole exercise would have been over.
Yet, there were insinuations by respondents that the safety of INEC officials and safety of the election materials may not be guaranteed in some polling units due to the outcome of the presidential election. Many respondents expressed fear that angry electorate may attempt to destroy the BVAS machines if they are deployed for the March 11 election. Some called on the Federal Government to beef up security during the governorship and House of Assembly elections to forestall the occurrence of their prediction.
A Civil Society Organization Chieftain, Elizabeth Effiong, stressed that the people have lost confidence in the country’s electoral process and, therefore would definitely show apathy during the coming election. She advised INEC to try to rebuild the confidence of the electorate in the electoral process by uploading the results of the presidential election to its IREV portal so that people will compare INEC declared result with what the BVAS machines recorded.
