Still on PEPT verdict and Nigeria’s future elections
By Emeka Alex Duru
Two developments, during the week, provoked the return to this topic. One was the concern by the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) following the September 6 judgement by the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT). The other was what a friend posted on his Facebook social media page, where he asked, “Is your PVC (Permanent Voter’s Card), still your power?”. Let us take it from the second issue.
Before the February 25 and March 18 elections, the PVC literarily carried the weight of the Lagos countryside medicine man whose concoctions, “Gbogbo n’ise”, commands the reputation of curing all common ailments. Having the PVC was seen as a ticket to the future.
At the village and communal levels, town criers were mobilised to educate the people on the importance of the document. In some instances, parents were required to show evidence of PVC collection before their children and wards were admitted in schools. Pregnant women presented the cards as condition to be attended to at ante natal visits.
To demonstrate the importance government attached to the PVC, work free days were declared at state and federal levels to enable workers collect their copies. The private sector followed suit, in some instances.
On account of the excitement the exercise generated, smart Aleks in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and their agents, turned it to an avenue for extorting desperate Nigerians.
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The scramble for the PVC was not without cause. The government and INEC made the people believe that possession of the cards would mark a beginning to transparent elections in the country. They electorate were told that with the cards, their votes would count and their voices heard. For a people that had over the years been treated to all manner of poll manipulations by the politicians and electoral authorities, the assurances signaled a new dawn. For once, there was hope that the people would have the right to elect leaders of their choice.
To shore up their confidence, INEC promised real time electronic transmission of election results from the polling units. The commission particularly flaunted the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV), as safeguards against rigging. And the people trooped out to pick their cards. But when it mattered most, it became glaring that neither the government of the day, nor INEC was prepared to keep to those promises. They rather showed that they were accomplices in compromising the poll. That was one of the grievances the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, Atiku Abubakar, took to the PEPT against the All Progressives Congress flag bearer, Bola Tinubu, who INEC, declared the winner.
The petitioners had contended that if INEC had followed its own guidelines for electronic transmission of election results real time, there would have been no cases of manipulation or suppression of results. But to the dismay of many, the Court held that INEC is not under any obligation to electronically transmit election results. In that case, the billions of naira of tax-payers’ money appropriated for the provision of the BVAS technology as a game-changer, training the personnel and the time deployed in educating Nigerians on the workings of the facilities, were merely wasted. What the Court has thus affirmed, is that politicians can manufacture any figure in elections to win. What matters is winning, not how it is attained.
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa touched on the matter, in his piece; “Two major decisions of the Presidential Election Petition Court I strongly disagree with and why”, published in News Express online portal on September 12. He argued, “The decision of the Court that INEC is not mandated to transmit election results electronically is with due respect to their Lordships, a huge setback to election administration and management in Nigeria, as we will now go back to the days of manipulation, falsification of results and general violence, thuggery and even rigging. It has been said that the most potent form of rigging an election is the stage of collation and transmission of results. By endorsing INEC’s lapses, the Court has unwittingly reversed all the gains of the new electoral law on e-voting. The Court was too fixated on technicalities rather than dwelling on the substantive flaws and misconduct of the electoral umpire. We surely should not and cannot allow INEC to run away with all the mistakes and failures of the 2023 presidential election. If nothing else, we should use the opportunity presented by these petitions to identify the observable lapses associated with the presidential election with the aim of correcting them to avoid the ugly situation where they could be deployed to haunt us in future elections.”
The fear arising from that is not substantially different from the concern raised by the Catholic Bishops on the fate of the country as the matter goes to the Supreme Court. Like many Nigerians, they are dazed at the conduct of the elections and worried on where this would lead the country to. They are looking up to the Supreme Court to right the observed wrongs at the PEPT.
“As this case moves to the next level, the fate of the country continues to hang in the balance and the future of democracy in our land stands on the edge of a precipice.
“We pray and hope that the Supreme Court judges will neither bend the law nor seek to satisfy the whims and caprices of any party. We also pray and hope for a day in our nation when all election results will be finally decided at the polling units and not at the court’’, the CBCN stated through its president, Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji.
You can therefore, understand the real import of the question by my friend on whether the possession of PVC gives the voter the power to elect his representative. There is no hiding the facts of unfinished issues about the elections. It is still a long journey ahead. The Supreme Court has a lot to do in restoring the confidence of Nigerians in the electoral system or dashing it further. How the issues arising from the polls are resolved will go a long way in reassuring the voters of the power of their PVC or encouraging a resort to self-help. Jokes are being made of a certain Asiatic country where presidential elections results were written two days to the poll. May Nigeria never get to that point!