Let me first agree that there is no presidential election yet conducted in 2023. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) started the process and there was voting but the collation of the results veered off the cause of the law and has now ended in irredeemable and incurable deformity.
Unarguably, this election raises so many issues and some of the issues are:
1. The refusal of INEC officials to transmit results from the poling units, as provided for by the electoral ACT, 2022.
2. Why did INEC publish results different from results signed by party agents at the polling units?, could this be the reason, why they refused to transmit the results from the polling units as required by law?
The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) is the electronic equipment deployed by INEC to give effect to the electronic accreditation of voters and transfer of results from the polling units to the INEC viewing portal (IREV). Verification and authentication of results must first be done before collation and announcement at Ward, Local Government, and state levels before the final stage at the national level.
Results of the elections from over 176,846 polling units ought to have been transmitted/uploaded to the INEC Result Viewing (IREV) Portal immediately after the votes were collated at every polling unit and before the commencement of the declaration of results at the national level. This is what incurably damaged the Presidential election and voided the outcome.
The Electoral Act 2022 was designed to ensure that figures do not get altered by colluding INEC officials and that when they alter the results, the electronically transferred results would show the variance and the affected polling unit result is canceled as a consequence.
There is nothing ambiguous about Section 64 (4) of the Electoral Act which states that “a collation officer or returning officer at an election shall collate and announce the result of an election, subject to his or her verification and confirmation that the number of accredited voters stated on the collated result is correct and consistent with the number of accredited voters recorded and transmitted directly from polling units and that the votes stated on the collated result are correct and consistent with the votes or results recorded and transmitted directly from polling units”.
It is settled that where the law has set out the procedure for the doing of an act, that procedure and no other must be followed.
The Supreme Court in many cases made this point very clear. In Nwankwo & Ors vs. Yar’adua & Ors (2010) LPELR-2109(SC) at P. 42, the Supreme Court said: “It is now firmly established that where a statute lays down a procedure for doing a thing, there should be no other method of doing it. See the cases of CCB Plc v. The Attorney-General of Anambra State (1992) 10 SCNJ 37 at 163; Buhari v. Yusuf (2003) 6 S.C. (pt.II) 156.
Again , where the Presiding officer fails to transmit and upload the result of the polling unit of which he presides over, his conduct will be termed as non-compliance as stated in the authorities of UKPONG & ORS. V. ETUK & ORS. The electronic transmission and upload is a condition precedent that authenticates and validate every election result. See PANALPINA WORLD TRANSPORT HOLDINGS v JEIDOC LIMITED & ANOR (2011) LPELR-CA/L/522/2009 where the court emphatically interpreted the term ‘condition precedent’ to mean thus: “An act that is to be performed before some right, dependent thereon accrues, connotes a condition precedent.” Per PEMU, J.C.A.
This position makes collation and announcement of results not authenticated and collaborated by the electronically transferred copy illegal and void.
It is very much alarming that INEC aided and abated the rigging and manipulation of the election results in favour of the All Progressive Congress (APC) by flagrant and provocative violation of the express provisions of the electoral Act 2022 by refusing and neglecting to transmit directly the results of the presidential elections from the polling unit to the INEC server/website as required by law.
I can still not understand why the electoral umpire was in such a hurry to conclude collation and announcement of the results, given the number of complaints of irregularities of bypassing of the BVAS, failure of uploading to the IREV, and unprecedented cancellations and disenfranchisement of millions of voters in breach of the Electoral Act and the commission’s own guidelines.
In a democracy, what gives any government legitimacy is free, fair and credible elections conducted within the ambits of the law.
Collation of results WITHOUT cross-checking with BVAS is criminal. The Electoral Act is unambiguous about this procedure and concurrency requirement between BVAS figures and manual figures. This simply means that manual collation cannot proceed without first being tallied with figures from BVAS. That’s the position of the extant Act and what the INEC rules says. This responsibility is statutory and rules out discretion.
Polling units results are the foundation upon which other results are built and the law is that the moment poll comes to a close and results are declared, the results must be uploaded on INEC servers or portal.
Bypassing BVAS and asking everybody to go to the tribunal is both illegal and an affront on Nigerians because reliance on electronic transmission of results with BVAS is not administrative but a legal requirement.
I hold that the presidential election was fraudulent and INEC compromised its own rules, So, whether a winner is declared or not, the election is NULL & VOID for want of (legal) procedure as long as the Electoral Act was violated. It’s that simple, nothing is legal outside the ambits of the law.
The supreme Court is again afforded another unique opportunity of allaying the fears of those who cast aspersions on the credibility of our courts. Those who mean well for our nation will agree that we have here an opportunity for the supreme Court to mitigate the rising unpopularity of our courts and to rehabilitate her damaged reputation and restore the good name of the judiciary.
Daniel Alagor LL.B., (Hons), ACIArb (UK), FHR
Socio Political Activist.
@yourpenship
An amazing display of facts with adequate evidence to support it, really good work.