In light of the ongoing investigation into the alleged misappropriation of N585m by the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Dr Betta Edu, the Presidency on Monday called for restraint and patience from Nigerians, warning against a media trial.

The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, who said this while responding to fresh revelations on the matter, disclosed that President Bola Tinubu had approved the release of N3bn to verify the National Social Register under the former administration of Muhammadu Buhari.

The social register was created for cash transfers and other social investment programmes under Buhari.

A memo dated December 18, 2023, from the Office of Chief of the Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, titled ‘Conveyance of approval; Re: appeal to use N3,000,000,000.00 (three billion naira) from the Covid-19 palliative fund for verification of the national social register,’ read:

“The above subject refers. Please be informed that Mr President has approved the expenditure of N3,000,000,000.00 (three billion naira) only, from the Covid-19 Palliative Fund for verification of the National Social Register. Please accept the assurance of my highest regards.

But speaking to The PUNCH on Monday night, Onanuga said “The President has directed the EFCC to investigate the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and all these matters are under investigation already.

“I am sure that the EFCC had seen that memo from the Office of the Chief of Staff and they are doing something about these findings.

“Let us allow them to do their work. Let us not to be doing double investigation on the same issue or a media trial on an issue that is under investigation. Nigerians should exercise patience.

“When the EFCC is done with their findings, they will tender their report to the President who will then act on the result of the investigation.”

An online platform had reported that a company owned by the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, was paid a total of N438.1m by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation under Betta Edu for consultancy services from the contract.

New Planet Project Limited was reportedly one of the consultants awarded contracts from the N3bn doled out by the suspended minister for the national social register contract.

According to reports, other beneficiaries include Fabunmi Olanipekun & Co, which got N419.5m, Vintsolve Global Consult was also paid N558.8m, Periscope Consulting got N277m, Blue Trend Enterprise was reportedly paid N277.8m, Laitop Dynamics Interlink Services got N277m, Memak Nigeria Limited was paid N277m, MC Van Management Consult Limited got N275.8m, Danzinger Nigeria Limited got N275.8m , while Blue Trend Enterprises received N277.8m.

THIS IS HOW THE POLITICAL PARTIES CAN PREPARE VERY WELL FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS IN ORDER TO AVOID BEING CHEATED OR RIGGED-OUT BY THE BIASED ALMIGHTY INEC..

Let me just try my best and suggest to the political parties what they should be doing in all these upcoming elections; pending the time we have functional implementable and enforceable Electoral-Laws in Nigeria.

1. Elections must Not start in any polling-unit where the sensitive materials are not complete, or tampered with, or not well documented by the polling-officers and party-agents.

The nonsense that happened in Kogi State, where elections started in some Polling-units without the presence of the Result-Sheets.
The results were later written on PLAIN SHEETS OF PAPERS, and then, an entirely different result (written on the Supposed Actual EC8A Results Sheets) were later uploaded to the IREV-Portal.
That was so baadd.

2. If the INEC Officials said that the essential sensitive-materials would be brought to the Polling-units later, then the election MUST NOT START, until the sensitive-materials arrive.

Everybody at the polling-unit must wait for the sensitive materials to arrive in full, and properly documented before the election can start off..

3. The materials and booklets that were sighted before the election must be properly documented by the party agents too.

(These materials and booklets that were recorded before the election must be collated independently by the political parties -- WHILE THE MAIN VOTING CONTINUED)

4. These untampered sensitive-materials and booklets (including their serial-numbers too) which were documented and collated before the elections started, would later serve as a serious tool for Checks-and-balances after the whole Collation must have been completed.
[Section-73(2)-Electoral-Act-2022]

5. After the whole election had been completed and concluded at each of the polling-units, all the remaining materials and booklets must be counted and properly documented, and their serial-numbers noted too..
(These remaining materials and booklets must also be collated independently again by the political party - for all the polling-units).

6. By applying the methods of checks-and-balances;
Whenever a results-sheet with a wrong Serial-Number is presented by any official at any collation-center, it would be noticed immediately and rejected outrightly.

(It means that the original sheet which was generated at the polling-unit had been swapped with another sheet which has another serial-number)

7. Still on the methods of Checks-and-balances;
The difference between the collated untampered full-booklets of ballot papes and that of those remaining booklets of ballot papers, would equal the number of used ballot papers, which is supposed to be equal to the “total votes cast + the destroyed ballots”.

8. The INEC - if left on their own - would not perform all these checks because they are in a haste to do what they want to do and end the whole process as quickly as possible.

But since the party-agents are also there as the electoral watchdogs, they must fully and aggressively apply these checks-and-balances, and use them to seriously question the credibility and the transparency of the elections.

9. On a very normal election day when massive rigging occurred, the values of the total number of ballot-papers used which INEC would be announcing would be so high.
(And these would be far higher than the actual number used as calculated from the checks-and-balances)..

10. The political parties must have their own fully independently collated parallel results of the election itself -- which is supposed to be totally independent of the INEC’s official collation.

The political parties Should Not solely depend on the collated results of the INEC for any reason.
It's too dangerous...

11. If there were transparent elections, the INEC’s-collated results should be in agreement with those parallel results that were independently collated by the political parties.

Then, under prefect conditions, all the results are supposed to all be exactly the same -- even though they were all done independently.

12. For the official collation of results by the INEC, the party-agents must make sure that they are fully present while the collation exercise progresses, no matter what happens there.

The party-agents Must Not boycott any part of the official collation exercise, be it at the lower level or at higher level.

13. For any collation-center where the party-agents were forcefully prevented from entering inside,, such party-agents must endeavour to capture such moments on videos as concrete evidence against the INEC and against such persons who prevented them from entering, so that it would be documented that the collation which happened inside such a center was fraudulent.

14. For any Ward-Level collation center where the “Accreditation Data” & “The Polling-Units Results” were not first cross-checked and re-confirmed using the BVAS-Machines; then, the collation officer at that collation center must be recorded on video and kept as evidence for violating the election procedures as clearly stated inside the Electoral-Act-2022.

These are my suggestions for now..
The political parties -- through their party-agents should be doing the tedious and rigorous works of the checks-and-balances for now,, until the time the electoral-act fully allows the new technological innovations to be doing the required checks-and-balances.

it's really very tedious, but they do not have much options for now.

RepoMan007:
I wonder how many LGA they (could have) covered for such phantom verification.

casualobserver:


If you actually did some calculations before you comment, you would realize it works out to about N3.875m per local government. It’s not a huge amount for a verification exercise.