Let it be put on record that a pan-Nigerian mandate freely given to Peter Obi of Labour Party was stolen in broad daylight. On February 25, 2023, Nigerians rose as one and voted a president. But the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) connived with the electoral body to openly and blatantly rig the winner out of his freely given mandate.
This is remiscent of the now historic June 13, 1993 presidential election in which the winner, MKO Abiola was denied a mandate he won free and square. But considering that that was a military era in which government was by fiat, it just might be understandable. But here’s a so-called civilian government and the people watched in shock as their mandate was before their eyes, TIPPEXED, obliterated, cancelled, miscarried and misallocated.
We say it’s before our eyes because we are in a digital age and hardly anything is done in the dark anymore. The entire heist carried out by Nigeria’s electoral umpire, Independent National Election Commission (INEC), is currently stored in the memory of the Internet where it shall haunt Nigeria ( like June 12) until it’s atoned.
But both INEC and APC didn’t give a damn. They were so desperate. All they wanted was to conjure figures and anoint their candidate – by hook or by crook. They cared not about the electoral law and rules. They cared not about the election observers from across the world.
As INEC was crouched over its shenanigans, major observers from the EU, International Democratic Institute, global news networks like CNN, Aljazeera, among others condemned the charade as devoid of transparency and the process as lacking in integrity.
But for four wearisome days after the votes, Nigeria’s INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu took the watching world through the most macabre post-election results collation witnessed in modern times.
It didn’t matter that Nigeria’s electoral laws were vastly reviewed and enacted only last year after about a decade of concerted campaign by majority of Nigerians. It didn’t matter that the law states clearly that electronic capture and result transmission would be the new order. The chief umpire, Mahmood, probably forgot that just a couple of months ago, he had reiterated with a vow, his resolve to transmit the 2023 election online real time as stipulated by law.
But not only that results were not transmitted electronically from the polling units, no attempt was made to ensure the integrity of the process by extracting results only from the BVAS machines. The authentic results captured by the BVAS were ignored and set aside. So results flew in from everywhere… and these figures were accepted and collated.
What’s INEC’S excuse? Their server broke down therefore results couldn’t be uploaded at the material time. But it has been reported that the portal was shutdown at the critical time in order to perfect the perfidy.
Therefore, all the ills the new law was designed to prevent happened and more. Crooked state governors seeing the loophole, went on a binge. They cooked up figures in their domains and forced hapless electoral officers, sometimes gunpoint, to take them. Collation centres in the states became battlefields where the 2023 elections were won and lost.
A governor was caught on tape threatening to kill electoral officers who would dare betray him after taking bribes. The social media was awash with videos of vote gerrymandering and miscarriages. This is not to forget election period violence visited on voters by thugs of the ruling party, APC who tried to disenfranchise voters in their opponents’ strongholds. Thugs and touts had a field day unchecked during the election.
In all of this, INEC chairman, Mahmood acted like a man under order to deliver a candidate by hook or crook. And that he did in the wee hours of March 1st, 2023. Call it Nigeria’s Ides of March coming early; it was that ominous. While most Nigerians were asleep, he declared APC candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu winner and before the end of the day, post haste, Tinubu was handed Certificate of Return.
Nigerians woke up and fell into mourning. Hardly any jubilation issued from any quarter upon the announcement of a new president-elect. It has been termed a BLACK WEDNESDAY by Nigerians. The day the voice of Nigerians was suppressed. A civilian coup d’etat!
Incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari has described Tinubu as the best man for the job. He has urged aggrieved opponents to go to court. Of course, Nigerians know that Tinubu is far from being fit for the job. President Buhari is probably returning a favour as Tinubu was instrumental to putting him in office 8 years ago. Tinubu’s dominant campaign message was that it was his turn to be president of Nigeria.
Buhari promised had to deliver a free and fair election. Apparently, he totally forgot his promise. Many Nigerians had thought that a credible election would have presented a singular redeeming value to a lacklustre tenure which competes for a place as one of the worst governments in Nigeria’s annals.
But no such luck for Buhari: perverse tenure, rogue election may remain his ignoble legacies.
While the chief umpire, Professor Yakubu would retire to the dark realms of infamy for the rest of his life, the robbed contestants are headed to the courts as they have been admonished. But when a robber dares his victim to go to court, it only suggests that his colleagues may be waiting there to finish off the victim.
The courts, the courts! The so-called Nigerian judiciary has not presented as temple of justice lately. Consider a situation where the United States recently announced visa ban for some of her most esteemed jurists and you may draw your conclusions. Perhaps this presents the judiciary opportunity for redemption?
As for the so-called president-elect, Tinubu, apart from being utterly unfit for purpose in every material particular, his election can be said to present an Escobarian moment for Nigeria, nay, the entire world. Let the bugle be sounded loud and clear that this Nigerian debacle would reverberate across the globe when it ripens.
By way of consolation for the great mass of Nigerians, especially the youths who rise up today as we did in 1993 in a hard-fought battle to cast off the slough of the old order, the Afrobeat legend, Fela has a word for them. Singing about the much flawed 1983 elections, he described it as BABA NLA NONSENSE (father of all nonsense), in an album: Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense. Fela sang that the ’83 election was worse than corruption.
Forty years later, the ’23 election is worse than MADNESS!
