- …Nigerians must rise up to challenge outcome
By Eseosa Ewere
THE Edo 2024 guber poll and its accompanying controversies is capable of setting on fire the fabrics of this Country; an election that even the electioneering umpire, INEC, cannot proudly step forward to defend, while the acclaimed winners and their few followers are gallivanting in town, a vast majority of Edo people, Nigerians, at home and abroad continue to condemn the processes and eventual outcome of the poll.
Organizations, groups and the civil society have lend their voices in faulting the exercise, noting its failure to meet the integrity test.
It was a travesty, a rape and brazen confiscation of the will of Edo people, who trooped out en masse to chose a new leader to succeed Obaseki.
Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki has performed commendably, it was a matter of sustaining existential legacies and expanding the frontiers of State for cross-cultural development—Edo people saw in Asue-Ogie the wherewithal to continue on prosperity path, they rallied behind the duo, but then INEC struck, deducting votes given to the PDP by Edo people and allocated to the APC, a strange and abominable development in electioneering history in Nigeria.
We had thought INEC would purge itself of the numerous inconsistencies it has had to contend with in recent times, by borrowing the lofty opportunities the Edo election presented to repair itself and redeem the confidence Nigerians has lost in it, a situation where a REC became a collation officer casts significant shades on the credibility of the election; matter of fact, no one can take the Edo election to the bank and bring out anything meaningful from it; a shambolic election, laced with illegalities, irregularities and highwired inconsistencies, to say the least.
Of the more than fifty (50) observer groups, not one has commended the election, even Yiaga Africa, has questioned the credibility of the election, noting that the “September 2024 election fails the integrity test due to significant irregularities in the results collation process”.
According to the project manager on elections, Yiaga Africa, “results sent to our system from the polling units match with results in IREV but the final result was altered at the collation centres”.
The questions are: why did INEC alter results at the collation centres; why did the Commission relocate collation of results from the LGA collation centres to State, and why was there a bias of chasing out PDP agents only to accommodate agents of the APC?
And what must have transpired to inform the REC taking over the responsibility of collating results, a task exclusively reserved for the collation officers?
Having confirmed manipulations and alterations of results from the Edo guber poll, Yiaga Africa, has called for immediate reforms and thorough investigations; a situation that should naturally border INEC.
One would have thought that the deployment of technology in our electioneering process will guarantee credibility and integrity of the outcome, it seems to have become the norm, wreckless abandon of technology resulting in human manipulation of the process; while deploy technology if in the end it will not be used and why not declare same result that has been uploaded in IREV from the Unit? Too many questions begging for answers.
INEC must purge itself, find ways to recover her lost glory, it must borrow the fortunes of the Edo gubernatorial poll to fix the wrought in her system; the institution must not provoke Nigerians to resort to self-help, it must adhere to its own laws and restore confidence, rekindling citizen’s trust, faith and hope in a sacred institution as that.
It should border INEC that 90% of elections conducted by it has remained topical issues in courts, with many being upturned, following irregularities and inconsistencies in the process; the institution cannot continue to breach its own rules, creating room for endless judicial redresses many of which has not favoured INEC.
It is very clear that the Edo governorship election for which INEC has declared APC winner, will be challenged in court and like many other elections before it, this will be overturned because the regulatory umpire, INEC, did not adhere to its own electioneering rules.
Even former President Goodluck Jonathan, has faulted the outcome of the poll.
Days after, Nigerians continue to fault the election, calling for a redress, and with the PDP now putting together its evidential materials to approach the court, what manner of defense will INEC put up, what character will the Commission exhibit and what leadership role will it play, in an election where it breached, abandoned, jettisoned its own rules; raped, abused, and subverted the will and mandate of Edo people, brazenly deducted votes from the PDP across identifiable LGAs and allocated to APC.
What explaining will INEC be giving the vast majority of Edo people and by extension, Nigerians, who following the questionable proceedings leading to the announcement of the results of an election that failed the integrity test, shrouded in irregularities, disregarded its guiding rules, laced with controversies, and is now described by many observers local and international, as the worse election in the history of electioneering in Nigeria.
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