By Peter N. Peters
Listening to the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu address the press, Tuesday, July 4, 2023, first time after the general elections of February and March 2023; watching him reel out his statistical appraisal of INEC’s performance at the 2023 general elections, which seem to point to a feel-good disposition of his performance, something struck me. He appeared to have conveniently chosen to detach himself from the realities of the Nigerian situation.
He probably played safe by restricting himself to analysing the outcomes of the elections in the federal and state parliaments as well as that of the governorship seats only to arrive at his pat-on-the-back appraisal, while conveniently avoiding opening the pandora box of the presidential elections.
He seemed not worried about the fact that what mattered the most to the citizens who turned out in their numbers and voted on that fateful Saturday, February 25, 2025, was the outcome of the presidential elections and not really those of the governorships and the parliaments. It did not matter to him that the massive participation of citizens in the presidential polls was a demonstration of their desire to deploy their PVCs to cause an electoral revolution, that could usher in a New Nigeria of their dream. And to that extent, his handling of the presidential elections (not the parliamentary or governorship elections) would definitely form a major benchmark to measure his performance as the chief electoral umpire of the 2023 general elections.
He appeared to have conveniently forgotten that the reason there was a sudden surge in the population of new voters during the Continued Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, which ballooned the voter population from 84 million registered voters in 2019 to about 92 million in 2023, was the desire of the citizens to show the ruling party the All-Progressives Congress (APC) at the centre the exit door, after their abysmal eight years of misrule.
The message in the straight face he tried to maintain while reading his address seemed to be that he probably was completely unaware of the gravity of his offence in the mismanagement of the presidential elections. Is it then correct to assume that he was not aware that by not keeping the promises he made to ensure that election results were transmitted in real-time to the viewing public through the INEC Election Results Viewing Portal (IREV), he created room for all the manipulations that followed, which eventually resulted in him declaring the one who was roundly rejected by the majority of the voters, the ‘winner.’ I was expecting him to be remorseful and apologise to the citizens for that grave disservice. But he did not.
What, in the first place, was the abnormality in the electoral process that the newly introduced technology code-named IREV was meant to cure? It was meant to close the rigging window that is left open for the dubious politicians to exploit hijacking the election results as they are moved from the polling booths to collation centres, falsifying the figures, and awarding themselves an undeserved victory. So how come it was exactly at that same critical point of the presidential election when the results should be uploaded into the IREV that the INEC’s ‘technical glitches’ occurred?
Curiously the results of the parliamentary elections that were also held simultaneously were not affected by the same ‘technical glitch.’ They were all successfully uploaded to the IREV. This is the reason most election observers believe and rightly too, that the ‘technical glitches’ was the creation of INEC to help APC rig itself back into power. And that’s exactly what happened. Otherwise, how can it be explained that the same citizens groaning under the yoke of the mass misery brought upon them by the APC’s eight years of misrule, went to the polls, and still voted them back to power? No be madness be dat?
Was he suggesting that he did not know that the ‘technical glitch’ happening at the time it did, was probably what helped APC rig itself back to power, even when the party and his presidential candidate were roundly rejected at the polls? Is he saying that he is not aware that the only thing he succeeded in doing was compound the sorrows of the teeming and suffering 133 million ‘multi-dimensionally poor’ Nigerians whose only hope of liberation was hinged on that presidential poll? One would have thought that he would have used the opportunity of his post-election address to enlighten the citizens on what really constituted these ‘technical glitches.’ Well, it’s now part of the many puzzles for the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) presently sitting over the election petitions to unravel.
Hang on! I heard him during his address saying that a list containing the names of about 200+ electoral offenders has been submitted to him by the police and awaiting prosecution. I hope his own name also made the list. Otherwise, it will amount to another grave injustice and another playing on the citizens’ intelligence if he would not submit himself for prosecution.
We were all awake during those long nights of collation of presidential election results, and we watched on the television how he brazenly resisted all entreaties by the party agents to halt further collation of results and address the many issues bordering on gross violation of the election rules, which they observed in the field. We noted how he promised to attend to some of the issues before announcing the results, but never did. Rather he went ahead to announce the election results at the ungodly hour of 4 am on March 1, 2023, despite the strong objections raised by most of the party agents. Then he gleefully enjoined all aggrieved parties to take their cases to the courts.
The way he wittingly overrode his own rules and discarded his promises all to ensure he returned the candidate of the ruling party ‘elected,’ constituted electoral offence worth prosecuting. And he should do well to include his name on the list of those awaiting prosecution.
The outcome of the 2023 presidential elections, which is now a subject of litigation in the courts, will remain a sour point in the tenure of Prof Yakubu’s career as Nigeria’s chief electoral umpire, as he succeeded in eroding all the gains made in recent years in providing for free and fair elections in Nigeria, thereby setting Nigeria’s election history right back to the ugly days of Prof. Maurice Iwu.
Posterity will certainly hold him responsible as a man who had a golden opportunity to re-set Nigeria’s electoral history with all the huge resources made available to him to put all the required technological tools necessary for free, fair and credible elections in place and set Nigeria right back on her feet for sustainable growth and development, but completely bungled it.
Peters is a Media Practitioner, and the Executive Secretary of Concern for Ethics & Values in Nigeria (CoEViN), an NGO based in the FCT. He can be reached with the email: pnpeters22@gmail.com
