OPINION: Electoral fraud in Nigeria and the threat to 2019 election

Written by Tony O.

Let me share a true life story about electoral fraud in Nigeria and why we should forget about the 2019 elections if the card readers are not legalized before then.

Attached to this post is a certified true copy of the number of accredited voters (as recorded by the card readers) in the Rivers state governorship election of 2015. As you can see, the total number of accredited voters was 292,878, but surprisingly Governor Nyesom Wike of the PDP won the election with 1,021,902 votes! Absurd right? But there is a justification!

During the presidential election of the same year, the INEC chairman gave an order compelling electoral officers to use ONLY card readers for accreditation. Aside this order, there was a provision for manual accreditation which required the usage of what INEC called the incidence form. This became the biggest loophole of the election.

While the election accreditation was half way, card readers began to fail. This was all that was needed for the great plot to be carried out. First, card readers failed to recognize the fingerprints of the then President, Goodluck Jonathan. If you are familiar with the card reader, you would have observed that the most fingerprints that the card readers fail to detect are usually those of rural farmers who have their fingers mutated due to manual work. There was no way the fingerprint of a 'big man' like Jonathan would have issues with the card reader (except there was a problem with his registration process). But we saw on live television how the card readers rejected the fingerprints of the then President again and again. It was embarrassing. Many persons believed it was part of the plot to justify the discarding of the card readers midway during the election.

Having set the ground for the grand plot, Jega, in the middle of the game directed all electoral officers to discard the use of the card readers and allow for manual accreditation. This was how the rigging plot became official!

As at 12pm, it was already in the news that Jega had given instructions for the card readers to be disregarded, meanwhile as at 1pm, in my local government area of Delta state, the electoral officers there had not received such an instruction. I personally asked an LGA electoral office why we were still battling with the card readers while there was an order from above. He simply claimed ignorance of the order. Indeed they had not received the order and did not receive it till at about 3pm. The order was already been carried out in Northern Nigeria even before Jega gave the order. There is now new evidence to support.

With Jega setting the pace for official rigging by disregarding his biggest anti-rigging invention; the card readers, the entire process became a huge joke.

States began to write results in millions! Kano state delivered over 2 million votes for Buhari whereas only about 800,000 voters were accredited by the card readers. Rivers state delivered about 2million votes for Jonathan, whereas only about 400,000 voters were accredited. Same thing happened in Katsina, Delta, Sokoto, Akwa Ibom and many other states. The 2015 election became the most systematically rigged election in our history. Lagos was one of the few states where there was real and fair electoral competition, even at that, the process was abused when the opportunity arose.

Jega, knowing the damage he had done, decided not to publish the accredited voters figure for the presidential election. If Jonathan had challenged the outcome of the election like Buhari had done as a loser in the past, the courts would have had more than sufficient evidence to nullify the election and call for another. In his wisdom and for whatever reason, Jonathan felt that was unnecessary. Both parties had rigged the election in their various strongholds.

In the governship election, again, Jega instructed that the card readers must be used as the only source of accreditation. He also added that where card readers fail to work, elections can be extended even by a day but manual accreditation should be avoided.

But there was a problem with this instruction. If the card readers are to be used in the strict sense of it for the governorship election, it would become obvious that there was fraud in the presidential election. The difference in figures would be too obvious to ignore. The electoral officers (in many states) decided to repeat what they had done in the presidential election. It was the smartest thing to do. And perhaps, Jega understood and agreed.

During the governorship election, we saw a significant drop in voters population. This was not surprising. States that produced 2million votes in the presidential election could not produce one million votes in the governorship election, this was despite INEC's attempt to balance the equation by disregarding the card readers in the second election.

The election tribunal began to nullify elections. Nyesom Wike (PDP) of Rivers state got his election nullified, Ambode of Lagos nearly got the same shocker but miraculously the Supreme court gave the entire tribunal process a new meaning. In it's ruling (Agbaje vs Ambode), the Supreme Court stated clearly that the card reader was an alien instrument to the electoral Act and on that premise, the apex court went ahead to declare the card reader as illegal! With that judgment, no election tribunal in Nigeria could nullify an election based on discrepancies recorded by the card reader!

Based on that judgment, the nullification of Wike's election by the lower court was reversed by the Supreme Court and ever since then the card readers had remained illegal even up till today!

The 8th National Assembly has made efforts to correct this mistake by making the card reader become legal, but surprisingly, President Buhari rejected the electoral Act amendment and cited (in his usual cunning way) election reordering, inconsistencies and most recently closeness to election as his reasons for the rejection.

2019 general election is here again. Rigging the election in favor of Buhari will be an extremely easy task, if I am a strategist working for Buhari, all I need to do is direct INEC to make sure card readers are used in opposition areas and disregarded in his own areas. The Supreme court has already declared the device as an alien device, until a law is made to reverse that judgment, election processes will be abused using the device.

Nyesom Wike would have won the Rivers election with or without the card readers. He had a lot of of Jonathan's sympathy and that was all he needed. Why he went ahead to rig so blatantly is something many people do not understand till date.

The card reader is the game changer  in our elections. We must legalize it and make it the ONLY means of accreditation before the next or election. The card reader is the reason why politicians now share money directly to the voters. Before now they would simply share the money to thugs to go hijack the materials. But with the card, material hijacking has become obsolete. What you need are PVCs and fingerprints.

We must do everything possible to ensure that the electoral Act is amended before the next election. If we fail to legalize the card readers before the next election, then we can as well forgot about the election.
One good thing the use of card reader will also do will be is to expose our real voters population. The voters population as recorded by INEC is highly inflated. In my prediction, by over 40%. The only way we can know our real voting strength is to use the card readers.

Until then, our elections will remain a huge joke.