EXCLUSIVE: INEC Official Explains Gov Uzodimma’s ‘Landslide Victory’ In Imo Guber

In what appears to be a major dent on Nigeria’s electoral system, a high-ranking official of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has blown the lid on what transpired during the recent off-cycle governorship elections in Imo and Kogi States.

Speaking exclusively to THE WHISTLER, the official revealed that the Imo State election, which saw the incumbent Governor Hope Uzodimma re-elected by a suspiciously wide margin, was systematically rigged through ballot stuffing and other means.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, painted a damning picture of widespread electoral malpractice, including the deliberate bypassing of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in favour of manual voter accreditation.

The BVAS is a critical tool prescribed in the Electoral Act, 2022 for ensuring the integrity of elections in Nigerian elections but it was allegedly sidelined in some LGAs during the Imo governorship election.

“Imo people didn’t turn out in the majority of the Local Government Areas. They just gathered our ad-hoc staff members in some designated areas who were just thumbprinting the ballot,” the official disclosed.

“At the end of the day, the presiding officer came in with results written for them by their supervisory presiding officers. They confessed they didn’t use the BVAS [Bimodal Voter Accreditation System] but officials were instructed to still upload those results into our IReV [INEC Result Viewing Portal].”

According to the staff member, a similar pattern was seen in Kogi State. He alleged that proper elections only took place in Bayelsa State on the same day.

“Check our IReV portal, you will see the figures. Check the uploaded results, they all favoured APC. I don’t know how accreditation figures would be generated,” he said.

“This INEC under Mahmoud [Yakubu] has brought us backwards, worse than the 2023 general election,” the INEC official told THE WHISTLER, in what appears to be an indictment of the Professor Yakubu-led Commission.

The allegations come as two APC candidates were declared winners in Imo and Kogi, with Uzodinma astonishingly winning all 27 LGAs in Imo.

In his first term, Uzodimma assumed office through a Supreme Court judgment that sacked the winner declared by INEC.

He had come fourth place with 96,458 votes (13.50%) while the declared winner, Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), scored 273,404 votes (38.29%).

But the apex court held that hundreds of thousands of votes, from 388 polling units, had been wrongly excluded from the vote count, and that the fourth-place finisher, Uzodimma of the APC, had received the majority of lawful votes cast across the state.

In the November 11 election, Uzodimma polled 540,308 votes to defeat his closest rivals, Samuel Anyanwu of the PDP, who scored 71,503 votes and Labour Party (LP)’s Nneji Achonu, who got 64,081, among others.

In Kogi, INEC had suspended voting in over 50 polling units after officials were reportedly caught with pre-filled results before the commencement of polls but the umpire went ahead to declare the final results of the election without concluding polls in the affected areas.

OBSERVERS’ VERDICTS

In the aftermath of the Imo election, Yiaga Africa, accredited by INEC, in collaboration with WatchingTheVote (WTV), said reports received from polling unit observers revealed that INEC officials “were unprofessional and partisan in over 15% and 14% of polling units in Imo and Kogi states, respectively.”

Although the civic hub noted that BVAS machines were deployed across all the polling units they monitored in Imo, “voters were permitted to vote without accreditation with BVAS” in 6% of polling units.

It added, “At 14% and 4% of polling units in Imo and Kogi respectively, Yiaga Africa observers reported voter intimidation, harassment or assault during voting.

“At 28% and 18% of polling units in Imo and Kogi, respectively, party agents attempted to influence polling officials during counting.

“Cases of non-use of BVAS for voter accreditation was received by Yiaga Africa. For instance in Town Hall Field/Alodo polling unit in Iboko/Efakwu Ward of Ofu LGA, Imo state and Polling Unit 005, in Ward 5, Lokoja LGA of Kogi State, the BVAS was not used to accredit voters before voting.”

A coalition of INEC-accredited election observers, led by Kenneth Umez of the ‘She for She Initiative for Women and Girl Child,’ had demanded the total cancellation of the governorship election in Imo.

Umez listed LGAs like Okigwe, Orsu, Orlu, Ehime Mbano and Ikeduru as areas where elections were not held but results were uploaded to IReV. He alleged that security agencies compromised their duties of ensuring a credible election by aiding the alleged massive rigging.

“That INEC may have exhibited flaws in many areas, one of which is outright relocation without notice to voters. In Orsu LGA, voters were not informed of INEC’s plan to conduct cluster election, hence many voters were disenfranchised. The question INEC must answer is who are those that voted in Orsu? Are they from Orsu or strangers?

“That in Okigwe LGA we observed that no result sheet was delivered to polling centres in all the eleven wards in Okigwe LGA. We also observed that election did not occur in Eight polling units in same election. The INEC and police authorities in Okigwe may have to explain where the collation for Okigwe LGA was done.

“We also witnessed that in Ehime Mbano, Ikeduru, Ideato North, among others witnessed desperate ballot box snatching as ball boxes were snatched and delivered to the fortresses of political party actors in the area,” said the observer.

— SCRAP INEC, ELECTORAL ACT — CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER

In the wake of these allegations, a constitutional lawyer, Festus Ogwuche, has told THE WHISTLER that Nigeria cannot conduct credible elections within the framework of its Constitution and Electoral Act, which according to him are being exploited by unscrupulous politicians to get into public office.

Ogwuche called for the total scrapping of the Electoral Act, 2022 and the Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC, as well as a complete overhaul of the country’s Constitution “rather than all these wishy-washy amendments to the Constitution.”

The lawyer also slammed the judiciary regarding judgments delivered so far since the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections as well as the March Governorship and State Assembly polls, saying “You don’t adjudicate on technicalities (in an election petition).”

Ogwuche remarked, “Anything that borders on fraud or criminality is something that should be addressed in post-election adjudication.

“We have to go back to serious electoral reforms. Not just electoral reforms but judicial reforms because even the judiciary itself has committed wrongs or even more than INEC itself.

“At the end of the day, people stand under the sun and rain to cast their votes and the courts decide who won the election based on technicalities. In most cases, the person who won the election is not the person declared by the courts. In some cases, it is not the persons declared by INEC that are declared by the courts and so the courts are the ones who decide our elections. So, there is no credibility in the process if you ask me.”

The lawyer noted that the credibility of an electoral process is the bedrock of any democracy and that the people deserve an electoral system that ensures their voices are heard without interference or manipulation.

Ogwuche stressed that the “greater blame” for the steady decline in the country’s electoral integrity rests on the judiciary because “you now have a judiciary that appears to be somewhat, both at the national and state levels, like an appendage of the executives of the state and the federal governments, pandering to the whims and caprices of the elite.”

On the Imo governorship poll, he asked: “Was there any election in Imo State? People just sat down and started writing results. There hasn’t been any improvement in election conduct in this country since 1999. We even had better elections in the early days of this democratic experience than what we have now. There were no elections. What about Kogi State? Where election results were pre-filled by scrupulous individuals even before the polls commenced.

“That’s why I talked about reforms. I also talked about scrapping INEC and throwing it into the dustbin. I also talked about such reforms that would require rewriting of the Electoral Act because the current Act cannot stand the test of time.

“I also talked about the Constitution. We cannot have credible elections under the framework of the current Constitution as it is because it (the constitution) must emanate from the people.

“The future of Democracy in Nigeria particularly is so threatened and I have fears that it may not last, and it would be quite unfortunate because people put in so much, invested so much energy, and some even lost their lives for the current emergence of this current democratic dispensation.

“We are seeing it going down the drain and nobody is saying anything about it, and the courts are not even helping matters,” said the lawyer.