Nigeria Decides 2023 — An Unprecedented Electoral Heist
Beware the ides of March…..a phrase that’s been in my head since Nigerians woke up on 1st March 2023 to the news that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Mahmood Yakubu had announced Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the 2023 Presidential elections in Nigeria. A more disastrous start to a month in which many Nigerians hoped the country would finally begin its march (pun intended) into a positive turnaround, you would be hard pressed to find. As the results came in from Sunday 26th February (the day after the election), news of irregularities, violence and intimidation were rife. To hear a winner was declared despite the widespread issues exposed the underbelly of corruption and anti democratic tendencies of Nigeria’s electoral umpire. In 2019 I had written this piece stating why I believed Buhari’s re-election was based on a stolen mandate. For 2023, it was much worse, much much worse.
Those who follow my Twitter handle or listen to the Nigeria Politics Weekly podcast will know I had mentioned 3 variables I would be looking at to evaluate the potential election outcome: (a) Turnout; (b) Violence/Intimidation; ( c) INEC. Turnout looked like it was going to be significant; the voters register had increased by 10m people and on the eve of elections, INEC information showed that 87m had collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVC), 93% collection rate. The enthusiasm was palpable and on election day it was clear from early on that the people were coming out to vote as seen in this report. For an upset to happen, high turnout was a must in my permutation, I had projected between 45–50% (my model showed 46%) and stated that if turnout went above 50% Peter Obi would win by a landslide. To achieve this high turnout, the southern part of the country where apathy and voter suppression had happened in the past would need to see a reversal….and it did. However, in the north, the numbers did not come through in similar fashion as previous cycles. Buhari no longer on the ballot seemed to have dampened enthusiasm. Still, if the early showings held, an upset looked to be on the cards.
My second variable required violence/intimidation (which was inevitable knowing Nigeria and the desperation of political actors) to be contained, not as widespread as to cause apathy or to significantly alter results. As expected, there was violence and intimidation at a number of centers, especially in Lagos where we saw Surulere as ground zero with thugs snatching ballot boxes and attacking non APC voters. We also saw threats against the Igbos, a reminder of the 2019 election in which even the Oba of Lagos jumped in the fray with his now infamous threat to drown Igbos in the Lagoon if they voted against his choice. In another similarity to 2019, most of the violence was in the South, with the North relatively quiet (this is not to discount the fire that burnt down the NNPP office in Kano killing about 13 people and for which House of Representatives Majority Leader Ado Doguwa is being investigated). There were incidences in Rivers with Governor Nyesom Wike seen to be playing a major role in the threats to election officials and party agents, while taking over the collation center in full glare of security forces who did nothing. Bayelsa, Delta, Enugu and other parts of the the South East and South South had issues. While the violence and intimidation were observed, the resolve of the people to cast their votes remained strong. It became clear that the final variable was going to be the decider.
INEC. The supposedly independent arbiter did not come into the election season with glowing credentials given past antecedents, but few would begrudge the fact that they had made some changes which created “some” level of confidence in the process as outlined. First, they had successfully gotten support for the 2022 Electoral Act that gave INEC significant powers and leeway to run transparent elections. The deployment of the Bi-Modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the codification of the direct transmission of results from polling units into law were massive steps forward to enable perhaps the most free and fair election in Nigeria’s history. INEC conducted governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun that went relatively well and their conduct was above par. They also ran a mock election few weeks to the election proper to test their systems and ensure readiness. For the first election in 4 cycles, there was to be no postponement of the election date. Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC seemed to be set to cover themselves in glory…..or so I thought.
First sign of trouble was news coming out across different areas of INEC officials not at the polling units for hours after voting was meant to have begun at 8:30am on 25th February 2023. As the day wore on, the news got worse. In some polling units the INEC officials did not show up at all. Where they showed up (and in some cases 4–6 hours late), they did not have sufficient voting materials or had only one BVAS machine. The areas where this was being reported gave the notion of a sinister plot to disenfranchise certain voters. Still, Nigerians stayed through rain and sun to cast their votes and wait till they were counted, some till as late as 2 a.m. Sunday morning!
The key moment then arrived. The counted votes were to be transmitted directly to the central system as promised by INEC. Non Nigerians may ask why was this important; the reason being that the rigging of elections in Nigeria has always taken place between the polling units and the collation centers (ballot snatching, vote stuffing, vote destruction, etc) and primarily at the collation centers themselves where due to the manual process, numbers were changed to favor unscrupulous politicians. A direct transmission would not only ensure the correct results were reflected (with electronic evidence), it would also take away the time and opportunity for any shady activity. Instead, INEC officials suddenly reported inability to upload results. Reasons ranged from system failure to inability to do so (lack of training/know-how, password not given, no network, etc) to an outright refusal in certain cases. It was a stunning reversal of the transparent process and immediately put INEC in the spotlight. Reports from the EU Observer mission (see here) and Yiaga Africa (see here) highlighted the INEC irregularities and how that lack of transparency as promised compromised the credibility of the electoral process.
Nigerians now had to wait for the results to come through the manual process and very quickly it was obvious that shady actions were afoot. It took 3 days for the results to be collated and declared by INEC. The results were shocking to say the least. First of all, INEC reported a total of about 25m votes cast, representing 27% turnout!!! To put in context, 2019 which had apathy and voter suppression recorded about 29m votes! Again, the view from polling units across the country on election day was in sharp contrast to the INEC declaration.
It got worse as the state by state declarations were coming through. Results showed a clear pattern favouring the APC candidate who lost his home states (Lagos and yes, Osun to LP and PDP respectively) but surprisingly won Rivers and Benue states. While PDP won 9 states to APC’s 7 states in the North, including Katsina and Kaduna (2 of the famous KKK states, Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso of NNPP won Kano), APC won majority of votes in the North across the 3 zones. In the South, LP dominated winning 9 of 17 states and the majority of votes across the 3 zones. APC came second with 5 states. However, there was clearly a systematic attempt to secure the 25% requirement across board with only the SE and FCT where APC failed to secure 25% in the states, an incredible achievement particularly in the SS and NC. 5 states where APC got between 25–29% (Adamawa, Bayelsa, Edo, Gombe and Taraba) raised eyebrows and when you throw in Akwa Ibom and Plateau at 31% and 30% respectively, the question marks become even more. The scale of the electoral heist was unprecedented and as the data then started coming through on the INEC iREV portal, it is becoming more obvious. Bear in mind that one week after the election, INEC is yet to fully complete the loading of results to its portal with 20,000 polling unit results still missing.
That Tinubu currently has an unpopular mandate as declared by INEC is clear, he is the first declared winner with less than 50% of the votes since the return to democracy in 1999. An understandable feature of having 4 major candidates (3.5 as I typically say), however it is an undeniable fact that INEC’s “results” show 63% of voters voted against the Tinubu/Shettima ticket. Both Peter Obi (who I believe won the election as I expected) and Atiku Abubakar have challenged the INEC declaration and proceeded to the Election Tribunal. It remains to be seen how the cases will go, one expects this to go all the way to the Supreme Court as other such electoral challenges have gone (since return to democracy in 1999, only the 2015 election went unchallenged as President Goodluck Jonathan accepted defeat following INEC declaration). INEC’s failure to transmit the results as required by law and INEC guidelines open the window for a strong challenge, as it speaks to validity of the entire electoral process. An illegitimate process can not produce a validly elected president-elect. The other key issue is the veracity of the results declared by INEC. Already, several citizens have stated the difference between voting outcomes at their polling units and what was declared by INEC. What is even more intriguing is the data INEC has uploaded into its own iREV portal showing mutilated and compromised forms EC8A (the official record from each polling unit that signed by party agents and meant to be transmitted using the BVAS). The variance observed across several polling units and ward/LGA results provide damning evidence of a compromised INEC that played an active role in subverting a process it seemed to have worked so hard to make right.
Peter Obi has promised to go all the way and stay the course for as long as it takes to reclaim the mandate he was willingly given by Nigerians. If there is one Nigerian politician who can be trusted on this, it is Obi. 20 years ago he was in a similar situation having been robbed of his victory in the Anambra gubernatorial election. He put up a stern challenge and 3 years later won back his mandate. I do not expect it to take 3 years this time given the evolution of the electoral Act and the judicial process. However, he can not and should not fight this alone. Obidients and other well meaning Nigerians who carried him on their shoulders to victory should not stop now, they need to walk with him every step of the way, sending a clear message to the powers that be that only true justice will be acceptable. We must have a fair judicial process based on law and facts and then any outcome will be acceptable. Anything short of this will be a recipe for disaster. Nigerians must put the pressure on both internally and externally, those in the diaspora should engage political leaders where they are based to ensure the judicial process is not interfered with and that it is expedited as required. It will not be easy or straightforward, but it is absolutely winnable.
On a final note, my mind goes to Mahmood Yakubu. A man who had all the opportunity to write his name in history as an undoubted architect of a modern and democratic Nigeria but threw it all way for reasons unfathomable at this time (many point to lucre, the base level pursuit of the average Nigerian elite). Instead, his name will live forever in ignominy (even worse than Maurice Iwu who is probably thankful that he has been supplanted) and he will be remembered not for the progress he seemingly sought to enable, but for the debasement of our electoral process and democracy he supervised.
