After a keenly contested election Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) emerged as the winner. He polled 8,794,726 votes to win the 2023 presidential election held last Saturday.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, announced Tinubu as the winner at the International Collation Centre in Abuja during the early hours of Wednesday.
Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second with 6,984, 520 votes, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) came third with 6,101, 533 votes and Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP)came forth with 1,496, 687 votes.
For days, weeks and months to come there will be analysis of the election, but for now the PDP and Labour Party candidates have rejected the results and said they were going to court. They held a joint press conference to denounce the election.
And people say, “Are you now friends?” After all, Peter Obi was in the PDP and moved to the Labour Party when it became obvious to him that he was not going to get the presidential ticket. Even Kwankwaso left PDP for NNPP.
I also heard somebody asking if Obi would have got the votes he got if he had contested in PDP, probably not. But this time around Peter Obi’s entrance made him an automatic Christian candidate and support was drummed up for him on the basis of the Muslim/Muslim ticket of the APC.
Before the election I asked somebody if Peter Obi campaigned in Kano, the person said yes, but he would go to a small place among the Igbo people. I felt that he should have sought the support of the Hausa people in the state.
In any case this election shows that anything can happen and people should not be taken for granted, as President Muhammadu Buhari said in a congratulatory statement to Tinubu. He said states in all regions changed colour , among them his home state ,meaning that APC lost Katsina State to PDP and “the winning candidate did not carry his home state either,” that is APC losing Lagos State, the home of Tinubu and a two-term governor there to LP.
These two examples make some people believe that people’s votes have been counted coupled with some big politicians such as serving governors and former governors losing elections. Some however don’t think so because of the failure of INEC to transmit results to its server from the polling units as it promised, with the introduction of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (VBAS) which had given people confidence.
Hours after the election, people started getting concerned and agitated because of that. Some demanded that INEC should come out and explain what the problem was and if its server was hacked. And when Festus Okoye , the commissioner for information and voter education of INEC was asked , he said Nigerians should keep calm and their IT or technical people were working on it.
The answer was far from satisfactory. This is not what Nigerians expect from INEC after many years of preparation.
But now you suddenly hear about doing so, so, before uploading, which INEC didn’t say before the election, or they didn’t bother to explain the process very well. They led people to believe what they wanted to hear, that as soon as you vote your vote would be at the server.
The poor handling of this vital issue of the voting process has led to some pockets of protests and the opposition parties and other people have latched on to it. It created doubt in the process which INEC should explain for its integrity. And going forward, there should never be ambiguity in any process please; even in this people should not be taken for granted and brushed aside.
Fake news where fake election results circulated, old videos of other events sent out with claims of other events just to cause crises were rampant.
It seems election violence has become a feature of our elections no matter the warning from the police. While some attacked polling units and destroyed election materials, some attacked people or even shot them.
Pertaining to election violence, many are surprised that Alhassan Ado Doguwa, House of Representatives Majority Leader has been arraigned and remanded on Wednesday in Kano over alleged killings in Kano during Saturday’s general elections.
The police should be ready for the governorship and state assembly elections coming on March 11, as for some that is their target as a do or die.
The mistakes, loopholes, sabotage, and success should all be a lesson for future elections, not to relax and repeat the same problems in the next round of elections.
