Dateline:14th April,2007
Time: 3.45 pm
Location:INEC State Collation Centre Asaba,Delta state
There was apprehension in the hall. Field reports that were trickling in showed that the DPP candidate, Great Ogboru was giving the PDP’s candidate,Dr Uduaghan a run for his money.
I shot a glance at the PDP’s Chief Returning Officer, Patrick Okowa, and saw anguish all over his mien. Then the NTA’s live broadcast of the INEC National Situation Room came up. The Chairman, Prof. Morris Iwu was about to announce some results.


For us at the Centre in Asaba, we were non-committal about the appearance for we knew that elections were still taking place in a few areas in Delta and that just a few results that were yet to be sorted had been brought to the collation centre. But nonetheless, we watched .
“The results of the Delta Gubernatorial elections are as follows...The PDP candidate Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan is returned as the winner of the elections”. At first silence pervaded all over the hall , then Okowa erupted into wild jubilation ,screaming “ POWER, POWER, POWER, POWER”.


There was no further need to wait behind for the results to come in, INEC under Iwu had manufactured results and announced a winner. That atrocious rape of democracy lasted for three years , before the Supreme Court upturned it and ordered another elections.
Billions that would have been used for other purposes were then poured into a needless exercise. This thread will answer pertinent questions such as, Can what happened in Delta happen again? Put succinctly, Can INEC rig the elections even if it wanted?
To answer, let me attempt to deconstruct election rigging patterns over time in Nigeria through a historical detour. Stick with me. We are going somewhere.
Under the military era in 1999, the crude manipulation of election results that later became the norm was largely absent.

The General Abdulsalami Abubakar regime used its powers to influence the primaries of the PDP which was the party that had the backing of the junta. The main elections were largely left to the electorates and politicians to determine.
Let me not twist history, that election was not anywhere close to what we can call an ideal election, given the many infractions of ballot box stuffing and collusion of officials with politicians to allow the stuffing go unimpeded.
But the Justice Akpata INEC had the support of the military and was able to maintain some peace thereby allowing us to see flashes of people power taking place at the polls in some States . For instance , what one could call an electoral revolution took place in Sokoto state.
The PDP had swept virtually all the local govts & most of the NASS seats in the first elections.Anybody that was somebody in Sokoto was behind the PDP.The election was expected to merely be a coronation for Yabo,the PDP’s candidate when against all expectations APP’s Bafarawa won
This was a reward for hard work for Bafarawa’s door to door campaign & the ingenuity of his man Friday,Alh Umarun Kwabo,one of the only known supporters that aligned with him.Kebbi State was another example.The PDP had also swept all the local govts & most of the NASS seats.

But,the military’s unwise decision to replace late Alh Abubakar Koko,the winner of the PDP primaries with late Bello Khaliel was disastrous.Two days to the elections,Koko aligned with one of his godsons who was the flag bearer of the APP and ordered his supporters to “eat corn”.
Adamu Aliero emerged governor. In the S/West, the AD won in-spite of the efforts of the military. These instances shows that although the elections were clearly structured to achieve a desired outcome, the people still had some say in what happened at the polls in some states.
Following, the return to the barracks of the military, any discipline and restraint that the jackboot approach of the military could have imposed on the polity was lost. By 2003, some of the most brazen and utterly disgusting rigging patterns were unleashed on the polity.


This reign was supervised by that EDO born intellectual,Dr Abel Guobadia. Ballot box snatching and stuffing,allocation of votes, intimidation of voters, violence, you name the electoral infraction and it was committed in the 2003 elections. The PDP ‘swept’ the S/West bar Lagos.
The audacity with which that electoral impunity was supervised gave rise to the calls for the reforms of the electoral system. OBJ was unimpressed. He had conquered the country. The accusations against him of lacking “home support” had been reversed.
By 2005, Baba replaced Guobadia with the infamous Prof Morris Iwu who not only continued with the tradition of crude manipulation of elections but took it a notch higher.

Such was the decadence and lack of credibility of elections conducted by the INEC under Iwu that Yar’Adua,the winner of the 2007 presidential election conducted by him, openly questioned the integrity of his election in his inauguration speech and vowed to do something about it.
He set up the Justice Uwais Committee which made far-reaching recommendations on electoral reforms. Yar’Adua could not implement these recommendations before death took this great Nigerian away from us.

I was seated in the middle of the NUC Auditorium in June 2010,listening to Prof Mahmood Yakubu, then ES of TETFUND make his remarks at the opening ceremony of a stakeholders forum on TETFUND when I got an SMS that Prof Jega had been tapped by President Jonathan to lead the INEC.
I leaned forward and gave Prof Jega,who was seated in front of me a gentle tap. He turned and I congratulated him. His appointment was the culmination of a long process of seeking that one credible Nigerian who could undo the years of electoral systems and process mismanagement.

Everyone agreed that his choice was spot on. He conducted the 2011 elections which GEJ won but which was challenged by GMB. Although that election was not perfect, it was agreed that the results reflected the will of voters at the polls.
I had been told by sources that one of the reasons Mike Ahamba(SAN) fell out with GMB was the former’s insistence that the latter should not continue with seeking legal redress since results available to them showed that they lost that election.The elections had its own problems.

There was evidence of over voting and ballot box snatching and all , but the Supreme Court still held that the elections complied substantially with the Electoral Act.
While everyone was still contemplating what else could be done, Jega came up with technology as a solution to many of the identified problems in election management.
Enter the Smart Card Reading Machines, Permanent Voters Card and Electronic Data Capture of voters. These innovations got the full backing of GEJ and paved the way for the electoral revolution that would soon follow.

First, with the electronic capture or accreditation, the era of temporary registration of voters was done away with. Before now, for every election cycle, INEC would carry out voters registrations and issue paper voters cards.This process made room for manipulation of the system.
For instance,Rivers state,in 2003, a miracle happened.The Registered voters for that election was 2,272,238. In a yet to be beaten National Record,95.5% of registered voters i.e 2,171,215 came out to vote & 92.7% ( 2,003,521)voted for PDP’s OBJ;42,346 or 2% voted for APP’s GMB.

If we consider that the national average for election turn out has NEVER exceeded 55% , what we had in Rivers was ‘miraculous ‘. That was possible because it was easy to collude with officials and allocate numbers to parties.
The innovation introduced by Jega would take care of that. With the call for voters registration, politicians, sticking true to type started their manipulations. They populated the register with fake names, underage voters, aliens , etc, just to sex-up their numbers and prove to
themselves that they had the numbers to win elections. Unbeknownst to them was the fact that, the new technology , which was compiling biometric information was going to make sure that it was not business as usual.

First, the personal collections of PVCs ensured that many
who had falsely registered could not come along to pick up their cards. This perhaps accounts for the 7m uncollected PVCs. In Bayelsa for example, cases of pictures sourced from Al manacs were found. The number was close to about 40,000. The computers found them and automatically
deleted them from the system. In Anambra, over 600,000 names had to be de-listed. However, the most important aspect of the PVC and Smart card reader introduction was the ability to clearly determine the actual number of voters that appear on the day of elections.

So, no way can any officials, after accreditation simply allot unaccredited votes to parties which was usually the norm. You see, in many places before now, once the voters that had turned up to vote were determined, politicians, through their agents pay the Electoral Officers to
allocate the registered voters as documented in the register to them. Any party with more money and influence in a polling unit grabs it, that’s why you hear statements like “ I delivered my ward”. This was a decisive blow for election riggers.
Thank you thus far.Let us now go to the meat of the matter. Before I answer the main question of ‘if INEC can rig the 2019 elections’, let me first delve into how the 2015 elections was won using figures from a few states .This is important to answer the rigging questions.

By the end of voting in the presidential elections on March 28, 2015, it was obvious to experts on elections that something unprecedented was about to happen. Our observers were reporting numbers that were unbelievable.
( This is where I urge you to follow me and also the ISDMG handles on Twitter, you will get elections analysis and reportage like you have never seen before, this time, no one will tell you the story).

Let’s continue. The numbers:
Total Registered voters: 67,422,005
Total accreditation:31,746,490
Total votes cast: 29,432,083
Total Valid votes: 28,587,564
Total rejected votes: 844,519
Total polling units 98,489
Full Biometric Authentication:10,266,139
Card only Authentication: 13,377,340
%success Full Biometric:43
%failed card only Biometric:57
Folks, look closely at these numbers.

I will begin to analyze them with more numbers. You shall see how GEJ lost, why PMB won, and how the South East made Buhari President by default.
You will also see what went wrong with the elections under Jega and what Prof Mahmood has done about it.The essence of this full disclosure is to foreground my insistence that elections are getting better under Mahmood and that 2019 will be very credible from the side of the EMB,

I cannot vouch for security agencies or politicians given the current scourge of vote buying.I will return to this.
By the end of the elections,the APC’s candidate won with the following votes:
Buhari APC ————15,424,921
Jonathan PDP————12,853,162
The margin of lead was —2,571,759
If you take a closer scrutiny at the numbers, the first thing to jump at you is the fact that there is a huge difference in the total number of votes cast and the total number of full and partial accreditation.


For emphasis:
Total votes cast=29,432,083
Total full &partial =23,643,479
The result is: 5,788,604
If you remove invalid votes from the number, you get 4,944,085.
The significance of this number is that almost 5m persons participated in the
elections without going through full or partial Biometric accreditation. They were captured using incidence forms. Why is this important?The reality of the 2015 election was that it pitched sections of the country against each other. So,while the South East and South South Voted
overwhelmingly for the PDP,the North East & North West stuck with the APC.The N/Central & S/West were not as defining as these places. Let us take a look at 4 states of Kano,Katsina,Rivers, & Akwa Ibom, states that usually churn out huge numbers before the arrival of technology.

In Kano,although there were 4,993,471 accredited voters in the state, a total number of 4,426,661 PVCs were distributed. On Election Day, 2,364,434 voters were accredited . However, out of this number, only 288,644 had FULL Biometric Accreditation(FBA).
FBA means that, they were present, the card reader identified their PVCs as genuine, then a “handshake” between the card reader and voter and PVC is consummated with the finger print of the person, meaning that there is not a shred of doubt that the individual is the owner of
the card and is eligible to vote. On same day, in Kano, 1,358,537 voters were accredited partially(PBA). Meaning that only their PVCs was authenticated, their finger prints could not be read. This brings the total of FBA and PBA to 1,647,181.

Therefore, a whopping 717,253 voters were allowed to vote without FBA or PBA. These persons were captured with incidence forms. These are part of that 5m.

Let’s go to Katsina:
Total registered 2,842,678
PVC collected 2,656,466
Total accredited 1,578,646
FBA 398,843
PBA 1,045,994
FBA +PBA=1,44,837
133,809 voters were captured with incidence forms.

Rivers
Registered voters 2,538,535
PVC distribution 1,468,020
Total accredited 1,643,409
FBA 152,975
PBA 158,844
FBA+PBA=311,819
1,331,590 persons voted in Rivers state without accreditation but with incidence forms. These were part of the 5m.Hmmm!

Akwa Ibom
Registered voters 1,717,766
PVCs distribution 1,596,471
Total accredited 1,074,070
FBA 234,141
PBA 288,755
PBA + FBA=522,896
A total of 1,194,870 persons voted in Akwa Ibom with incidence forms. Part of the 5m.

This was the case in every state. Mostly from the South. So, the notion in many places , particularly from the South that votes were pumped up in the North may just not be the total picture. The manifestations were more in the South than it was in the North.
Consider this, if Kano had unleashed its registered voters population on Election Day, there would have been over 4m voters ready to thumb print with no one to stop them. So, why did Buhari still win even with such high number of non-Biometric accreditation in the South.
The answer is simple: The South East refused to turn up for GEJ. They handed victory to PMB. Let’s carry out a summary analysis of the five states in the South East but we shall highlight Abia as a metaphor of the widespread apathy in the South East on Election Day.

Abia
Reg voters 1,396,166
PVCs collected 1,192,268,
Total accredited 442,538
FBA 218,599
PBA 102,401
FBA+PBA= 320000
Incident forms =122,538

The total voting capacity of the South East ,using only those that collected PVCs as reference as at 2015 was 6,692,752. How many came out to vote? 3,060,093.Only 46% of voters in the S/East turned out to vote.The number from GEJ’s home state of Bayelsa was even more ridiculous.
Out of the 605, 637 Registered voters, only 384,789 came out to support their son.
I have deliberately refrained from using registered voters most of this analysis because I am aware of the shenanigans of politicians during registration.

I have already highlighted how they pumped up the register but how do you explain the refusal of those who collected their PVcs to vote?
The unusually high number of incidence forms was the subject of litigation in the various tribunals . To ensure that our votes counted, the Mahmood INEC decided to do two things: first, include the use of card readers and technology as a whole in the legal framework and then the
very bold move of outlawing incidence forms in the elections .
What is the implication of these moves? Only voters who accomplish the hybrid of card reader and PVC verification will be allowed to vote. In fact, anywhere card readers don’t work, the election is to be
suspended till the next day to enable the INEC rectify or bring back up machines .

This was the major failing of the Jega INEC which made the courts to cancel an unprecedented number of the 2015 elections thereby casting a huge dent on the credibility of that effort.
This bold move has started yielding dividends. It has become not only difficult to snatch and stuff ballot boxes since that is irrelevant, but now, politicians can no longer allot votes to themselves. This is the reason why votes buying has become the last resort of politicians.
To answer the question, can INEC rig elections now? An emphatic NO. With these innovations, the role of the EMB is gradually being diminished.

There is virtually nothing an INEC official can do for anyone anymore. Politicians have realized this and have shifted the gear to
the public who unfortunately, are colluding with them and of course security to compromise the years of reforms in the INEC that has started to pay dividend. The Mahmood reform was tested in Osun where only one incidence firm was used and that was to accommodate the PDP
candidate whose Biometric could not be read on Election Day. For this to happen, an express approval was sort and received from the HQ. It won’t happen again. The best bet for politicians is to campaign hard and sell themselves to voters. Prof Mahmood ‘s personal integrity
itself is another reason not to have any doubts. I have shared with you all how this paved the way for credible elections in Bayelsa, Anambra and many other places. At a one time, the then APC chairman accused him of being a mole of the PDP and the PDP accused him of
working for the APC.

This is a good sign. It simply means that he is for nobody( apologies to Baba). So, let skeptics go grab their PVCs , listen to political actors and feel free to vote for anyone, knowing very well that no manipulation from the EMB is possible.
Except they decide to sell their votes and that one is a different matter. It is refreshing to read that Prof Mahmood has vowed to do something about vote buying starting from Osun elections,let us watch how that one turns out.

Thanks for sticking here .

The End.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AMADICHIMA/status/1033835109915545601

PVC/Card reader is still not recognized legally until the president sign the electoral bill of 2018 into Law.

Nigerians should mount pressure on Buhari to sign the electoral bill into law so that 2019 general election will transparent and free fro violence

This post has clearly redeemed my analysis and thoughts.i have always believed and shouted that south south and south east rig elections more.rivers,delta and akwa ibom are the biggest culprits.the north do not rig as much as the south.only the south west hold a credible election followed by the north central.may God bless whoever posted this.buhari till 2023

Secondly,this brilliant and objective post shows that if we minus all the rigging that characterized the 2015 polls,buhari would still have won even by a larger margin.it shows also that the card reader was the biggest factor contributing to buhari's victory as it curtailed rigging,vote allocation and massive inflations.it revealed the true voting sttength of the ss/se and other areas.
Again,it reveals that buhari may likely win next year polls in a free and fair or otherwise atmosphere.it also gives us an idea of how next year polls will pan out.in the south east with a total voting population of 8 million and a low turnout,3 million votes will be casted,pdp should have 2.5 million,apga 1.5 million and apc 500k.in ss,5 million voters should turn up.apc 1.t million,pdp 3.5 million votes.in the south west with 14 million voters,7 million should turn up with apc having 4 million,pdp 3 million.

In the north central 5 million should turn up.pdp and apc would share the votes equally.in the north west with almost 20 million voters,10 million voters will show up.apc should have 8 million with pdp 2 million.if kwankwaso contests,pdp will have 3 million.in the north east with 10 million voters,5 million votes will be recorded.apc will poll 4 million,pdp 1 million.