With a few days to the Presidential Poll, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is rounding up its preparations across the 36 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
Expressing its readiness to conduct the General Election as and when due, the Commission has said that it will not contemplate shifting or adjusting the timelines.
INEC’s National Commissioner on Publicity and Voter Education, Festus Okoye said the Chairman of the Commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, had consistently and emphatically given Nigerians the assurance that the dates for the conduct of the 2023 general election were fixed and firm.
He explained: “The question of shifting, postponement or adjustment of the timelines are not on the table and are not being contemplated by the Commission.
“The purveyors of postponement cannot speak for the Commission. Their views are in the realm of imaginative speculation and not grounded on the realities on ground.”
Okoye reiterated that the Commission had implemented 12 out of the 14 items on its timetable and schedule of activities.
He noted that Sections 132 and 178 of the Constitution circumscribed the period for the conduct of national and state elections, adding that it would be in the interest of the Nigerian people and in the interest of the country’s democracy to hold the elections on the dates and times set out by INEC.
“We must continue to assure Nigerians that they will vote in a safe environment, that their votes will be safe, that the votes will count and be counted. We must not dignify fallacious speculations not grounded on facts and reality,” Okoye said.
The electoral umpire insisted that on no account would it allow anti-democratic forces and fifth columnists to confuse the people on its plans and intentions.
The commission said the clarification became imperative, following a report by a section of the media that it was contemplating postponing the presidential election by two weeks due to recent attacks on its facilities, especially in the South-East.
On the commission’s preparation for the election, Okoye said the entire Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) required for the conduct of the election in the 176,846 polling units and the redundancies for the 8,809 Registration Areas have been tested and certified fit for purpose.
He stressed that INEC used 436 out of this for mock accreditation in 12 polling units in each of the 36 States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
He added: “Thereafter they were purged and configured for the 2023 general election. The non-sensitive materials required for the election are in our zonal stores and in the states. They are being batched in accordance with the registration areas.
“The commission has delivered a substantial number of the sensitive materials required for the conduct of the election to the Central Bank of Nigeria. The materials will be inspected by the commission, the political parties, the media, and civil society groups a few days before their movement to the various local government offices of the commission.”
He said the commission has revised and firmed up its Memorandum of Understanding with the various transport and marine unions.
He reiterated that INEC would hire at least 100,000 vehicles to convey election personnel and materials to locations, stressing that the commission would also hire boats for the same purpose.
Okoye recalled that the commission met with the leadership of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and they assured the commission of the availability of products during the period and the commission was encouraged by this.
He disclosed that INEC also met with leadership of the federal courts headed by His Lordship, the Chief Justice of Nigeria and he assured the commission that the judiciary was ready for the elections.
Preparation for Likely Run-off
Also as part of its preparation for the forthcoming election, INEC has said that it plans to conduct a run-off presidential election, in a situation where no candidate meets the conditional requirements for declaring a winner from votes cast on February 25, 2023.
Okoye said that such a plan had been the tradition of INEC for all elections conducted by the commission since the return of democracy in 1999.
He said that the commission had already printed double the total number of ballot papers required for the first ballot, in case there was a rerun election.
He said preparation was always made along with the first because the commission had just 21 days to conduct the rerun or run-off election.
The national commissioner said that before a candidate could be declared winner of the presidential election, he or she must have the highest number of votes cast and secure a quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of the states of the federation and the FCT.
He said where the threshold is not met by any of the candidates; the constitution stated that a second election should be conducted for two of the candidates with highest and majority votes, in line with the provisions of the constitution.
“Section 134, subsection 2 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which is the fundamental law of the land, makes it mandatory that before anyone is deemed to have been elected as a president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, that candidate must secure the highest number of votes cast at the election.
“He must also secure a quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory. That is mandatory.
“Now, if no candidate secures this highest number of votes and the mandatory threshold, the Constitution says we must have a second election within a period of 21 days.
“Now, not all candidates are going to participate in this second election. Eighteen candidates will be on the ballot for the first election,” he said.
Okoye also explained that: “If no candidate emerges on the first ballot, only two candidates are going to be on the second ballot or only two candidates are going to contest the second election.
With about eight days to the presidential election date, no clear frontrunner has emerged as all the four major candidates are confronting challenges on their path to the highest political office in the land.
The leading presidential candidates on parade include Senator Bola Tinubu, a former Lagos governor and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as well as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar. Atiku is also a former vice president.
Two other candidates that are challenging the dominance of the APC and PDP are Rabiu Kwankwaso and Peter Obi of Labour Party.
Obi is a former governor of Anambra State and he has been generating a following among young Nigerians. Another former state governor and former minister, Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso, is contesting under the platform of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP). Kwankwaso is a former Governor of Kano state.
Okoye said there shall be a second election between the person with the highest votes and the person with the spread, but not necessarily the second highest votes scored.
He said, “Section 134 of the Constitution says that where there are more than two presidential candidates, for a presidential candidate to be declared duly elected, he must secure the highest number of votes cast in the election and not less than a quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.”
Introduction of BVAS
The introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) has buoyed the confidence of Nigerians in the ability of INEC to deliver a good election. And as we go into this year’s elections many Nigerians are enthusiastic that the outcome will reflect their wish at the poll.
The BVAS is a dual capacity device for recognising fingerprint and facial features. It ensures that the person holding the voter card and trying to vote is the actual owner by matching these distinct features. In other words, the past debacle of politicians buying voter cards from voters and using them to vote enmasse for a particular candidate would be eliminated.
Observers believe that the introduction of the BVAS promises to address some of the challenges and drastically reduce election rigging.
Unlike before, politicians will not be able to manipulate election outcomes through vote buying at the polling units, election machines, compromised INEC officers and ballot snatching.
The BVAS, which was introduced in 2021, was first deployed in the Isoko South Constituency 1 bye-election into the Delta State House of Assembly held in September of the same year.
The device was also used in the November 2021 Anambra governorship election, but it malfunctioned in many polling units across the 21 local government areas of the state. The development initially cast doubt on the reliability of the BVAS for the general election.
However, the BVAS gained a better appraisal at the off-cycle governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States held this year. This development greatly boosted INEC’s morale and despite the pressure from some politicians to drop it, the Chairman of the commission, Mahmood Yakubu, insisted that it will be used in the forthcoming general election.
A recent development that also attracted controversy around the usage of BVAS is the decision of the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal where the Tribunal in its judgement cited cases of over-voting.
But speaking with THEWILL, a former INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner for Akwa Ibom State, Mr Mike Igini, said the credibility of the BVAS was intact.
“The BVAS integrity remains intact. It has not been impeached by the Tribunal in Osun State”, Igini said.
Speaking on the controversy trailing the BVAS, Igini said, “It is sad that for a country that is about to embark on a general election, you have a situation where the major tools and technology to be deployed for the conduct of the election of such magnitude is being doubted. Suddenly doubt is cast on its integrity. The situation requires the intervention of all who know what the technology is about. That is my interest in this whole thing. For over 10 years, even before I came to INEC and before leaving, my interests have always been in the process.
“If the process is credible, the outcome will be accepted by the people without fuss. My preoccupation with the intervention I have been having in the last few days, following the many lies that are being told about the BVAS, is the reason why I decided to tell the truth about the BVAS, so that people’s morale is not dampened and their confidence is not shaken about a device that we have used to conduct over 100 or so elections.
“The Osun election makes it over 105 elections that we have conducted and used the BVAS technology for. It has been under pilot in several by-elections and a number of off-season elections, even before the 2022 Act was signed on February 25, 2022. This is to tell you the distance that this BVAS has travelled and the mileage it has covered. Suddenly people are saying things that are not true. Even things that the Tribunal didn’t say. The Tribunal didn’t say what most people are talking about. It therefore requires clarification and a clarion call to Nigerians to disregard in its entirety all the wrong things that are being said about the BVAS.
“The BVAS is a technology that has been used to put the Nigerian people at the centre of electoral democracy and put the candidates at the periphery on Election Day.”
About the Author
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
