“The greatest threat to the constitutional right to vote is voter fraud.” – Lynn Westmoreland
On Wednesday, May 29, 2024, South Africa conducted parliamentary elections. Before the polls, the electoral commission promised to deploy technology to make the ballot fraud-free, fast, and transparent. It did exactly as promised. The world witnessed one of the most credible elections in that country.
Only those who appreciate the importance of reputation try to keep their word.
In Nigeria, Professor of History, Mahmoud Yakubu, who chairs the Independent National Electoral Commission, studied the profiles of historic leaders but chose to locate himself on the wrong side of history.
Thirty-nine days before Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election, precisely on January 17, Yakubu addressed the global community in Chatham, London, to expound how prepared his Commission was to conduct one of the best general elections in Nigeria’s history, using the most modern technology. He titled the address “Nigeria’s 2023 Elections: Preparations and Priorities for Electoral Integrity and Inclusion.”
The chief electoral umpire said: “To avoid the usual challenges with the application of new election technologies, the Commission introduced and tested our innovations for the election early enough. There are three critical components namely, the INEC Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) for improved registration of voters, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for both voter accreditation and e-transmission of results for collation and the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal to offer the public access to view Polling Unit results.
“The IVED has been deployed for the recent registration of voters, which saw the inclusion of 9,518,188 new voters in the register of voters after a thorough clean-up, thereby bringing the number of voters for the general elections to 93,469,008 of which 37,060,399 (39.65 per cent) are youths between the ages of 18 and 34, closely followed by 33,413,591 (35.75 per cent) middle-aged voters between 35 and 49.
“Together, they account for 70,473,990 (75.39 per cent) of the total. Already, their PVCs, which every voter requires for identification on election day, have been printed and are being collected nationwide. The collection of PVCs will end on January 29, 2023.
“For the BVAS and IReV, we initially deployed it on a pilot basis in several bye-elections and off-cycle governorship elections. The IReV was used in the governorship elections in Edo State (September 2020) and Ondo State (October 2020).
“A combination of both BVAS and IReV was used in Anambra State (November 2021), Ekiti State (June 2022) and Osun State (July 2022). The BVAS was also used in the Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in February 2022.
“Deploying this technology in these major elections afforded the Nigerian public and the Commission opportunities to get acquainted with the device and to review its performance to enhance it towards the general elections. For the Commission, several lessons have been learnt from these deployments and we believe that we are ready to deploy these technologies for the general elections.”
After the well-delivered speech, the world waited for INEC, believing that a free and fair election was in the offing. The confidence reposed in him by many arose from the introduction of technology which gives little room for manipulation. Moreover, he said the commission had already tested it in Anambra and Ondo gubernatorial elections.
The electoral demons who thought that they would find a way out introduced to Prof Yakubu the magic digital word GLITCH which they had reckoned would demystify everything. Alas, science is not prone to fraud! Even though human beings will attempt to be involved in it, they were unable to sustain it when the chips were down.
Amazon, the domain of the INEC technology for the election, refused to acknowledge that there were glitches because there were none. The fraudulent INEC thought they could isolate Nigeria from the rest of the world for their crooked and devious acts. They didn’t understand that technology has made the world a global village. They thought they could hide in their crooked cocoon to do anything the Nigerian way and get away with it.
Having used the word glitch as a defence but failed to establish that it could happen in Nigeria alone, Yakubu and his team in INEC came out unveiled in their treacherous and dishonourable act in the 2023 general elections. They were digitally deficient, could not manipulate the system and had to rely on corrupt politicians and the judiciary to push their agenda. Technology refused to cooperate with INEC and made them vulnerable in their circuitous acts.
Technology has a way of making things difficult for analogue and corrupt criminals who are not digitally upgraded. To effectively manipulate technology you must be in a higher rank of science and technology and even at that, the fundamental truth cannot be diminished. The Nigerian analogue history professor did not factor in his ignorance of the new technology when he negotiated with dubious politicians.
No matter how much they pretend, Prof Yakubu and his team in the electoral commission of 2023 will live the rest of their lives with the conscience load technology heaped on them. They would have to bear the guilt of trying to twist technology. Yes, the beneficiaries of the fraud may be enjoying the illicit fruits of the artifice because they are in power, but Mahmoud Yakubu and Co will live with the cog hanging on their neck forever. They would be in the black chapter of the election books In Nigeria because when technology came to make elections easy and transparent, they corruptly obstructed it with their fantasy glitch which they could not establish in the digital world.
Nigerians may have decided to move on and allow the wile and their perpetrators to share the space with them but it has not erased the punishment of unconfessed sin, especially when the consequences of the sin are plunging the nation further down.
Why am I musing over the 2023 general elections 16 months after and with the beneficiary already in power for 12 months? In the public’s eyes, the resurrection of the matter may be tantamount to crying over spilt milk. However, the recent election in South Africa raised my adrenaline as the world watched the transparency of an election that not only respects technology but rejects glitches of any kind. As they adored and respected technology, they enjoyed transparency, speed and credibility. They had no dubious agenda, they didn’t need to doubt technology. It was indeed a delight watching an electoral process that reveres the will of the people, respects technology and operates by the rule.
Why did South Africa succeed where Nigeria failed? The answer is not far-fetched; in South Africa, there is a serious reprimand system that puts anybody entrusted with the responsibility to be careful because failure has consequences.
Not so in Nigeria, Mahmoud Yakubu and his team, security agents whose bosses played critical roles, plus the judiciary are all sharing the space with the honest and sincere leaders and even flaunting their ill-gotten wealth.
Besides the underhand settlement of some of the judicial operatives who helped to endorse electoral fraud, the federal government in cahoots with the National Assembly has hiked the salaries of the judiciary by 300 per cent, building new quarters for their leaders. A society that compensates for and celebrates evil cannot aspire to be great at the same time.
Nigeria is celebrating 25 years of uninterrupted democracy from 1999 to date, the longest so far with seven general elections. In virtually all the seven general elections there was glaring evidence of electoral malfeasance by electoral umpires, politicians and their agents yet not a single Nigerian is in jail for electoral offences in the last 25 years. Instead, those in jail are the poor youths they used to manipulate the election but dump them afterwards but as they try to rebel they are killed or arrested and sent to prison.
Mahmoud Yakubu and his co-conspirators are moving freely. So is the Adamawa Resident Electoral Commissioner, Hudu Yunusa-Ari, who announced the gubernatorial results in favour of APC’s Aisha Binani Dahiru when collation was yet to be concluded. Why should he be afraid or ashamed when he watched his bosses at the federal level do the same and even more?
South Africa succeeds where Nigeria fails simply because in that land there is no manufacturing of any technical glitches and there is no Mohamed Yakubu in character and execution, above all there is punishment for offenders, and laws are enforced irrespective of who is involved. In South Africa’s local elections one Nomusa Precious Gabuza, 37, an electoral officer was charged, convicted and sentenced after she was caught out by the internal processes of the Commission to prevent voter fraud,
The official was sentenced at the Umlazi Regional Court, in Durban. She was found to have abused her position and broke the law by stuffing 24 ballot papers into a ballot box ahead of a Local Government Elections. In Nigeria, one is more likely to see someone fatally hit by lightning than to see an election offender being punished. God help us.
