AFRICA ( Commonwealth Union) _ Recent presidential and legislative elections in Nigeria were held in incredibly difficult circumstances. The ruling class’s atrocious incompetence and callous disregard for the misery of the people were once again on display when a bungled currency exchange prevented depositors from withdrawing their money. Due to a fuel shortage, commuters found it challenging to move around without restriction. Kidnappings, terrorism, and other crimes killed at least 10,000 people last year.
Many people therefore feared that the elections might never take place despite assurances from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its haughty Oxbridge-educated chair, Mahmood Yakubu, who had obstinately refused to apologize to Nigerians for the last-minute postponement of the 2019 election.Given that Nigeria’s three previous elections in 2011, 2015, and 2019 were all delayed, it was a miracle that this election was really held on time.
Many people have criticized INEC’s conduct in its capacity as an impartial referee. Yet, it seems as though the system’s evident flaws were caused more by complacent incompetence than by willful fraud. Any close observer of Nigeria is aware that this election was not any different from the six others that have taken place since 1999.
The main difference was that Yakubu had overpromised and under-delivered by placing too much faith in the much-heralded Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which he had repeatedly assured Nigerians would function at all 176,734 polling stations. Nevertheless, on election day, the system experienced multiple difficulties that caused downloads to be delayed and forced manual entry of numerous counts. Rumors began to circulate as a result of Yakubu’s unwillingness to communicate in a timely and transparent manner, which opened the door for as-of-yet unsubstantiated claims of INEC and the ruling All Progressives Congress working together (APC).
Only 36.7% of polling places opened on time, with the Southeast, Lagos, and Plateau regions being particularly afflicted, according to a thorough post-election investigation by electoral observers from the Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).
According to INEC’s BVAS, the Northeast experienced the most failures, and the Northwest experienced the most illegitimate voter accreditation. As a result, INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) was unable to deliver results directly from the elections as promised. Additionally, CDD observers observed certain instances of vote-buying and voter intimidation (especially in the Northwest, South South, and Southeast). Yet it didn’t appear that they were widespread enough to have an impact on the election results.
