“Frankly, it’s unfortunate that some of us in the national opposition do not understand the value of the PVC and in the process we’ve shot ourselves severally in the foot. The PVC is a two-stage thing. First stage is to actually collect it and the second is to use it during the vote. But, of course, the second stage totally depends on the first because only persons who have actually collected their PVCs can use them in any election. Yet, what did some members of the opposition do? Out of frustration, they began to dissuade people from collecting the PVCs. We did not learn from the fact that part of the reason Buhari won in the last election was because of almost 40 percent of PVCs uncollected and the uneven distribution favouring areas he was likely to gather more votes. It’s now four years after and we still do not appreciate the value of the collection of PVCs. As at the end of August this year when the issuance of PVCs was closing, only a total of 854,362 PVCs had been collected across the country, while about 7.4 million PVCs are still uncollected. Lagos alone has 1,377,702 of these uncollected ones”. - September 30, 2018

At the end of the day, what we know is that the total number of PVCs uncollected was 11,228, 582. This is quite high, even though in percentage terms it is only 13.37 percent. Of course, I won’t say the campaign against PVC collection by some people who think it’s useless caused this, but it was something the riggers wanted because it is in their interest to have lesser numbers of people having PVCs. The lesser the numbers, the lesser they have to budget for in their vote-buying enterprise. So, we had cases of these people working with unscrupulous INEC staff to frustrate registered voters who wanted their PVCs before the election. That mostly accounts for that high number of uncollected PVCs.

Their second strategy against the PVC was to ensure that its distribution favours areas they think they’re strong. But, of course, there’s no foolproof way of ensuring this especially as Nigerians were quite energized about this election and were dogged in their determination to get their PVCs. This accounted for the fact that 86.67 percent of the PVCs were collected nationwide. Their attempt to depress collection in certain opposition states failed, but they succeeded relatively in some states like Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Imo and Ekiti where they expected to have some problems.
Having failed to depress the collection of PVCs as they’d like, they deployed their third strategy of working for a staggered election in order to take a page from their Osun playbook. This is because they did not know how the PVC collection rate would affect their overall numbers, especially after their own internal polls have revealed they would lose comprehensively anytime the election was conducted.

But they were resisted by Professor Yakubu who had an eye on conducting the election all over the country in one day to avoid the Osun experience he knew had tarnished his image considerably up to that point. In order to force the INEC Chairman’s hand, they waited until a few days after the election and began to sabotage INEC offices nationwide through multiple burning of offices and sensitive electoral materials. When Professor Yakubu did not budge under the pressure (he even offered to resign), they escalated the sabotage strategy by using the Central Bank, the Air Force and the NURTW who were to distribute the sensitive materials to the states by ensuring they did not deliver in some states. In fact, we had cases of pilots in the air being asked to return to base and NURTW members told to turn back with materials. This was the basis of that talk about logistics problems being the causes for the postponement of the election on February 16.

Note that while this whole pressure on the INEC Chairman was on, Buhari and the APC already had 8 of the 13 INEC National Commissioners in the bag. They were breathing down Yakubu’s neck, insisting he conducts the election (staggered election) on February 16, but he refused.

At a point during their deliberation, we saw one of the Commissioners, Festus Okoye come out that night to address the press that the election was still going to hold. Again, this was to force Yakubu’s hand, but, again, he did not budge. Eventually, it took up to 2:59 am in the morning of that day the election was supposed to hold for a dejected Professor Yakubu to announce the postponement for one week. In the following days, we witnessed the APC breathing fire and watched at their caucus meeting as Buhari issued threats against INEC and ordered shooting of ballot-box snatchers. It was obvious they’d declared war, but they were ready to deploy their fourth strategy.

Their fourth strategy was to suborn the Electoral Officers (EOs), the State Collation Officers and the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs). The only REC that was on record not to align with them was Mike Igini of Akwa Ibom, which was why Oshiomhole viciously attacked him. It was a state-by-state strategy that was simply based on allocating figures by the process of massive disenfranchisement of people and careful manipulation of the process. They did this by first ensuring that only a fraction of the people with PVCs voted by deliberate failure of the smart card readers and in certain obvious places, the removal of the names of voters they think wouldn’t vote for them from the register pasted at the polling units. This is why you had these types of complaints nationwide. Of course, the law says once a voter’s fingerprint matches the PVC on the card reader, they should be allowed to vote, even if the name is not on the voter register posted, but the ad-hoc staff who deliberately were not well-trained by the EOs, were instructed not to allow anyone without their name on the register to vote. To ensure the plan works, they then pasted only certain names at the polling units. One tactics they used to effect their plan was to paste names alphabetically while removing swathes of names that alphabetically belong to certain ethnic groups in areas they know they’re predominant.

For instance, you take a place like Zuba in Abuja, they pasted names starting with A, but didn’t paste names starting with C, E, N, U and so on because most of those names were names of Southerners they think would vote Atiku. Where some persons with names starting with these alphabets approach them and they are persons with a Northern name or persons they think would likely vote Buhari, they make exceptions and let them vote. In the meantime, they spent the day pretending they were trying to solve the problem when in fact they were doing nothing. Typically, they would tell angry prospective voters that more names are coming from the INEC office and that they should be patient, but when at the end of voting time no such names were forthcoming, these voters left for home dejected. This way, they were able to disenfranchise a lot of voters. That is what explains the supposed low voter turnout nationwide, which is totally at variance with the huge numbers Nigerians that actually turned up at the polling stations.

The fifth strategy was then to deliberately not paste the results at most of the polling units as lawfully directed. In fact, there is no record of any polling unit this was pasted nationwide. So, you get situations where they might declare a candidate won a polling unit, but that will not be pasted. To make this plan work, they also bypassed the legally required provision to pass these results to the ward collation centres and in most cases went straight to the EOs at the Local Government. Once the results of these various units get to the EOs (Local Government Collation Officers), they simply change those numbers to reflect what they want before it moves up the chain to the state level and then to the national level where they made all of us watch them in that medieval display of reading the ‘results’ from large sheets in front of the television with the INEC Chairman presiding.

Therefore, what you saw them reading out on TV as figures were figures originally cooked up at the EO level. That is why to those well informed about INEC, the EOs are some of the richest electoral officials you’ll get. You can watch the talking heads scratching their heads and wringing their hands complaining that only about 35.7 percent of PVC holders voted and they are putting that down to “voter apathy”, but, of course, this is not true at all! Nigerians came out en masse with their PVCs, but, of curse, the fact is that through the tactics I’ve enumerated, they deliberately disenfranchised many. Yet, even then, it was not the votes of those that voted that were compiled (which was why they never pasted the results at the Polling Units as required by law), what they compiled at the EO level nationwide were figures of their own to meet their purpose. I’m not saying all EOs in the country were part of this conspiracy, but they obviously had enough of them in the bag to achieve their aim.

The sixth strategy was vote buying. This was strategically deployed in areas they knew they were not popular, not necessarily to win, but to ensure that they do not get scandalous outcomes when results are declared in these polling units (even as they knew these were not what the EOs would record). That was why they were deployed in the few areas they have predetermined to go through the ward collation centres before getting to the EOs. To that effect, they devised a sophisticated method of employing up to six people to oversee the process from the moment a suborned voter votes to when and where he/she collects money outside the voting area.

The seventh strategy was intimidation using state security agencies and instruments of violence. The deployment of the security forces was not done to protect the people, but to execute the aim of returning the incumbent by hook or by crook. We saw how flash points identified by INEC’s Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security were not properly manned which accounted for the more than 40 deaths witnessed, some in the hands of soldiers. In many instances, men of the armed forces left their primary responsibilities and became participants in the electoral process. Cases of such involvement in the electoral process were reported in places like Rivers, Bayelsa and Yobe states. Also there were cases of men of the armed forces preventing Election Observers performing their legitimate duties even after proper identification. In some cases, we had reports of voters being turned away from accessing their polling booths as we saw in the riverine areas of Delta State where waterways were blocked.

The eighth strategy they deployed was an overriding one and it was deployed long before the election. It was Buhari’s refusal to sign the 2018 Electoral Bill into law. Buhari and his people realised that one core feature of the proposed law would have put an end to his rigging plans and that feature is the one requiring direct electronic transmission of voting results from the polling units in real time. So, even if with their voters suppression, depression of votes, antics with pasting of voter registers, deliberate sabotage of smart card readers, militarisation of the process and intimidation of opposition voters and so on, even if indeed only 35.7 percent of PVC holders were ultimately allowed to vote, what this would have done was immediately reflect the exact figure. The mischiefs of not pasting results at the polling unit, bypassing the ward collation centres, EOs allocating figures and so on would simply have been of no effect because the actual voting result would reach INEC and the world at the time of voting and no one would have had the opportunity to manipulate things and come on TV in the name of transparency to be reading out cooked-up figures at the INEC Collation Centre at the International Conference Centre, Abuja. Buhari’s excuse for not signing the Bill at the time was that “passing a new electoral bill this far into the electoral process for the 2019 general elections, could create some uncertainty about the applicable legislation to govern the process”. This is in spite of the fact that the issue of applicable legislation was not in doubt as the issue was simply a case of making the process more transparent and less susceptible to rigging. Indeed, he was saying this only after letting the bill languish at his desk for several weeks and with him quite aware that the National Assembly will not muster enough votes to veto him as he and his party men and women in the National Assembly were already invested in rigging from day one.

On implementation, all these strategies were deployed in such a way as to give the impression of a fair contest but with a view to piling up the figures in favour of Buhari in a way no one can reasonably challenge them, even with allowances for the scandalous number of cancelled votes in PDP areas affected by thuggery (which they deployed), killings, malfunctioning card readers and other factors. For instance, we are told Buhari won 19 states and Atiku won 17 states with Abuja, but then the vote margin is almost 4 million. They were able to achieve this by making sure that in most states Atiku won, it was a close contest, while in most states Buhari won, the margins were huge (especially in states they recorded more voters and where he’d traditionally won in past elections). In order to also make it look like this is indeed the voice of the people, they sacrificed a few of their own persons on the ballot in the Senate election, but this is with an eye to ensure that Senator Ahmed Lawan, their choice for the next Senate President, has no obvious challenger. It was on that basis they took out Akpabio and Akume. People like Ajimobi were taken out to weaken his power base at home. Amosun and Okorocha fought like the thugs they are to clinch on. They know where the skeletons are buried, so they’re grudgingly left alone. On the opposition side, taking out a Saraki was a main objective because of the stress he’s given them during the first term. But overall, they want the impression created that the people rejected these persons due to the peculiarity of their local politics and in the case of Saraki because of the role he’s played at the national level against Buhari. It’s all part of building on the Buhari mystique.

Also, we need to realize that the results were structured in such a way as to emasculate Southern power brokers within the APC because of Buhari’s hegemonic agenda. Please, note that when I say this, I’m not in any way saying Buhari’s pro-North power game is meant to empower Northerners as a people or the North as a region. No, it is meant to strengthen his cabalistic and nepotistic hold on power and remove the pressure on him from certain Southern power brokers who would be cogs in the wheel going forward. That is why the election generally demystified many Southern power brokers in the APC. Oshiomhole lost his area, Akpabio did, Fashola did, Ajimobi did and Amaechi too. Tinubu needed thugs to hold on frantically and all the PDP bigwigs in the South-East lost scandalously, including all his ministers from the area. Okorocha had to hold the Returning Officer of Imo West (Orlu) Senatorial Zone, Professor Innocent Ibeabuchi hostage for days to force him to declare him winner. This means all these Southern leaders in the APC will have lesser say in what happens in the next government and anything they get would be seen as a favour that they need to be eternally grateful for. They simply have to sign to Buhari’s hegemonic agenda to be part of his government project going forward.

So, the problem with the election is not with the PVC. Remember what I told you in September 2018:
“Professor Kperogi, you know that voting is only one part of the electoral process and defending the vote is another. Defending the vote involves the judicial and social and political protest processes. As I told a friend, if anyone thinks just rigging and “winning” is enough in 2019, then they must be smoking pawpaw leaves. People need to understand that if a vote is rigged, it is their duty to ensure that this is challenged and overturned by the tribunals and the courts and the only way this can happen is through evidence of what has gone on. PVC is primary evidence of participation. In this age of Internet and smart phone technology, evidence can be put together to nullify or overturn an election that the irregularities are so glaringly determinative of the finally declared result. The basis of this in court and in a political protest is your PVC. The PVC is the only legitimate document you need for voting access, so how can you credibly complain if anything goes wrong if you don’t have access? It is therefore crucial that while you preach the need for mass protest if Buhari is defeated and does not leave, you let people know that there is a condition precedent and that condition precedent is to vote with their PVCs.

“So, rather than claim the PVCs will make no difference, people genuinely interested in removing the Buhari government from power ought to be campaigning for more people to go get their PVCs, so Nigerians can make a firm statement of rejection of the APC through the ballot box because there simply is no other way in our democracy. If the fear is that the Buhari people will still rig even with the PVCs, then they need to know that we will cross that bridge when we get there. Without the PVCs, we will never get to that bridge; we will never be in a position to stop them at all if they rig. The PVC is your voting ticket and what you need to be in the game. If you are not in the game, you cannot change it and you cannot complain when they do any abracadabra. Democracy is not a tea party; we need to be wise”.

Now, we’ve seen how they methodically ensured that the PVCs do not determine the outcome through mass disenfranchisement of PVC holders via many antics on election grounds nationwide, intimidation, thuggery and killing and outright falsification of results to the extent that many collation officers and their RECs had their figures mixed up as we watched them on national television. Atiku has said he’s going to court. It would be an arduous task to put the evidence together because it would require painstaking forensic examinations right from the polling unit level nationwide. But at every stage, the PVCs will tell a story either in their use or in the prevention of their use because I believe that a close examination of the 35.7 percent that actually used them will reveal an Atiku win. Of course, how the tribunals and the courts that Buhari and his people have rigged pre-election will look at the evidence and rule on them is another matter. The PVCs have done their bit and will continue to do more as the matter goes through the judicial process. So, rather than blame the PVCs or mock their use or non-use, you should be grateful that they would provide the primary basis to begin to challenge the declared results. I mean, without the PVCs, how else could you have proceeded now lawfully with the facts as we know them?
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https://www.facebook.com/kennedy.emetulu/posts/10213351036105706:25

who read it?
I understand to skip, it's longer than the bible

who read it?
I understand to skip, it's longer than the bible

I stopped reading after about the second paragraph because it was obvious you were still not going to make any sense. .

you wasted maybe a whole day preparing a wail message

I read it and the article is on point.

Deep

Hear him, Atiku says he is “ashamed as a Nigerian that such could be allowed to happen”.
That is how we have been ashamed of the way the country was being run, of the mindless looting, of the supervision of relentless desecration of our institutions, culture and way of life to a point that it has brought Nigeria, a country with such unimaginable potential, to this ridiculous and pathetic state. We are at a point where OUR uneducated and uneducable CHILDREN are DYING of diseases and hunger at HOME, or are being ROASTED whilst crossing the scorching Sahara DESERT or are tragically DROWNED in the Mediterranean whilst crossing to Europe, a land of their colonizers! If OUR young women are not caught up in a circle of early marriage, Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) and poverty, they are kept under a slave-like oppression and prostitution across the globe.
That is what Nigeria has become, a country that a few years back was the voice, pride and hope of the blacks!

Atiku, you can now have a taste of how dysfunctional Nigeria has become. This is what we have been screaming about all these years! I sincerely wish I can say it is going to be better. I am looking for the straw. The straw is not found in those who brought us to this state. Or do you see that the straw in the youth? But where are the youth? Nigeria needs total cleansing before salvation, otherwise it is definitely going under. No one wants to associate with a fast degenerating entity that cannot even manage a simple collation of how many people live in Nigeria, never mind election! We shall continue to pray. -FirecloudOFGOD

A well thought out write-up

Very detailed and accurate analysis of the sham election and its ramifications.

This is a good piece, even if it is not true ( I doubt), it was methodical written and it speaks volume.