Former President Olusegun Obasanjo did not show up at his Polling Unit 22, Ward 11, Olusomi compound,Totoro, Abeokuta-North local government area of Ogun State to exercise his franchise in Saturday’s polls.
It was the first time that the former Nigerian leader will not vote in an election since the nation’s return to democracy in 1999.
Obasanjo, who had declared his support for the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, voted in the February 25, 2023, presidential and National Assembly elections. However, journalist, who thronged the former president’s polling unit to capture him while exercising his franchise during the governorship and House of Assembly elections on Saturday, were disappointed as he did not register his presence.
When contacted, Obasanjo’s media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, confirmed that his boss had traveled out of the country 10 days before the elections.
Akinyemi, in a phone interview, hinted that Obasanjo was billed to return a day before the elections, but he was yet to arrive.
“Chief Obasanjo had traveled 10 days ago to India, US and UK. He was supposed to return back to the country yesterday (Friday) March 17 but could not return.”
File photo of a Politicians sharing money during election | Credit: Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre
A political think tank, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has expressed that public sale of votes, violence and intimidation are threatening the credibility of the governorship and State Houses of Assembly election that was held today, March 18 in most parts of the country.
The Executive Director of the group, Idayat Hassan, at a media briefing, commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for promptly deploying logistics and prompt arrival of electoral officials, saying however that there were occasional issues of non-functionality of the Bi-modal Voters Accreditation System.
In a preliminary statement on the elections today, Idayat Hassan said that data from its 1,500 observers deployed across the country showed there were more cases of vote-buying during the governorship election compared to the presidential poll of February 25.
According to her, this reality reflected across all six geopolitical zones.
“In the North-West, observers in all seven states reported increased reports of vote trading, primarily by political party agents. Money was used alongside other materials such as food items, wrappers and ‘credit voucher,’ and those items would be redeemed after the results.
“Similarly in the North East, political party agents in Taraba infiltrated the queue, pretended to be voters and used the chance to offer cash for votes.”
She said that CDD observer data showed that across the southwest zone, INEC officials arrived on time and promptly commenced the process in over 80 per cent of observed polling units.
“This trend is broadly consistent across the six geo-political zones. In Anambra State 75 per cent of polling units had INEC officials who arrived on time with voting commencing on average at 8:41am.
“There was even a report of INEC officials in Benue state having slept over at the polling unit to avoid late coming.”
An electoral monitoring Civil Society Organization (CSO), Connected Development (CODE) has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for adapting fast to the new technology in handling voting.
This was even as it also condemned the alleged attack and suppression of voters in Lagos and other States in the governorship/State Houses of Assembly election today, March 18..
The Chief Executive Officer of the group, Hamzat Lawal, at a media briefing, expressed satisfaction with INEC for the early opening of polls in 79 percent of the polling units it observed.
”We must commend the functionality of the BVAS in this election. This indicates the commission’s commitment to embracing this new technology in our electioneering process.”
The group which commended INEC on the uploading of results on the IReV, confirming that some results have already been uploaded on the IReV portal, advised the electoral umpire to keep to the promise of electronic transmission of results for the gubernatorial elections.
The group however, expressed concern over the conduct of the election in a number of polling units.
According to the group, there was violence in numerous polling units across the country, even as it identified Lagos State, Ojo/Iba LCDA Local Govt Area, Polling unit: Princess Eneni Street, Victory Estate, Polling unit code: 091, as some of the affected areas.
”For example, in Ebonyi State, one of our own, an accredited Uzabe field observer, Uzodimma Lucy Ogodo was brutally attacked for refusing to vote for a particular party. This is unacceptable and against the tenets of democracy which we strive so hard to maintain as a nation.
”The democratic contract of our country dictates that we as citizens have the exclusive right to determine who our leaders are and we must protect this right, and this is why we are again calling on security agencies to act swiftly and ensure justice is served.”
We decided to feature the following Editorial opinion of the PREMIUM TIMES online newspaper because we share the thoughts expressed in it). Read on:
Reactions from across the world have followed the 25 February presidential election, which produced old guard politician, Bola Tinubu, as Nigeria’s next leader. Mr Tinubu was the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the platform on which outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari has governed Nigeria since 29 May, 2015.
While a number of world leaders have congratulated the president-elect, some Western media have echoed the views of the Nigerian opposition and a section of the local media, which have been very critical of the election.
Mr Tinubu was announced winner of the hard-fought contest with 8,794,736 of the over 24 million votes cast in the election. His tally represents only 37 per cent of the votes, the lowest by a winner since 1979. Yet, it is 8 per cent higher than that of his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) was further behind with a 25 per cent share of the ballots.
Not unusual in Nigerian elections, the opposition has refused to concede defeat, and the two closest contestants have launched a formal challenge of the results in court. They are alleging electoral fraud. In addition, they are lamenting the failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload screenshots of polling station results to a web portal, IReV, created for the purpose. Even at that, though quite ironic, some of the election results at the national legislative levels favourable to these parties have been endorsed and celebrated.
PREMIUM TIMES believes that INEC’s failure to upload the results, as promised, is a major flaw that has cast doubt on the credibility of the election. The electoral commission’s explanation for the failure, offered two days after the election, was that technical glitches hindered it from uploading the results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV). The agency has since uploaded and published over 90 per cent of the results.
Some opposition politicians have also questioned INEC’s interpretation of the law on the national spread of winning results. The Constitution requires the winner of the presidential election to secure at least a quarter of the votes in each of two-thirds of the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Mr Tinubu crossed that threshold in 29 of the nation’s 36 states, but his challengers are saying he also needed to have done so specifically in the FCT, where he didn’t. INEC believes that is a wrong interpretation of the law.
Some media organisations, as well as a number of local and international observers, have corroborated the opposition’s claims of lapses in the conduct of the election. In its interim report, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which deployed 1,000 members from its 128 branches to monitor the poll across the country, identified some of the challenges it observed. These include “late arrival of INEC officials and ballot materials at the polling stations, malfunctioning of the biometric voter accreditation system (BVAS) machines, limited or non-transmission of results from polling units to the INEC Result Viewing (iReV) portal, insecurity at some polling units, including violent attacks on voters and officials, voters’ intimidation, snatching and destruction of voting materials.”
Despite these observations, the NBA said about 92 per cent of the voters its Election Working Group interviewed said they were either “somewhat satisfied” or “excellently satisfied” with the conduct of the polls. What the report suggests is that respondents do not consider the observed lapses significant enough to damage the integrity of the election.
It is noteworthy that since INEC began uploading the results to the IREV portal, a number of voters have alleged discrepancies between what they witnessed as votes that were collated at polling units on Election Day and what was published on the result portal by INEC. But such observations are not widespread.
YIAGA AFRICA, a non-governmental organisation which did a parallel tabulation of the results from many states, reported variations between its results and those of INEC in Rivers and Imo, two states also flagged by the media and some of the opposition parties for significant levels of electoral irregularities.
While some logistics challenges, malpractices and violence in some locations undermined the election, PREMIUM TIMES believes it is excessive and inaccurate to describe the exercise as totally flawed or as the worst in Nigeria’s history, as some want the world to believe. If anything, the election demonstrated appreciable progress in the nation’s electoral process, in comparison to past ones.
An analysis of media reports on Election Day indicates a reduction in reported cases of ballot box snatching and vote buying, compared to previous elections. It is unclear to what extent the scarcity of cash, due to the implementation of the naira redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria, contributed to this.
The results of the poll, more than anything else, also support our own assessment of the election. Although the ruling APC runs the federal government and 21 of 36 states, Mr Tinubu won in only 12 states. He lost in some of the party’s historical strongholds, some with large voting populations. These include his home state, Lagos, Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Kebbi, Yobe and Gombe, all of which have APC governors.
Aside from the President-elect who lost his home state, the National Chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu, and the Director-General of Mr Tinubu’s campaign organisation, Governor Simon Lalong, were also trounced in their Nasarawa and Plateau States, respectively, by the Labour Party. President Buhari’s home state, Katsina, as well as Kaduna, Kano and Kebbi, which have governors fiercely loyal to Mr Tinubu, all fell to the opposition.
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Adamu.
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Adamu.
The Labour Party, which had no elected official in its ranks and had been derided by opponents throughout the campaign for lacking political structures across the country, recorded a stunning victory in Lagos, polled nearly 90 per cent of the votes in Mr Obi’s home South-East zone and disrupted long-established voting patterns in the South-South states of Cross River, Delta, Edo and Rivers. It is difficult to explain how a completely rigged process would deliver such outcomes. At no other election in Nigeria’s history has so many shocking upsets been recorded, including the loss of seven sitting governors seeking election to the Nigerian Senate.
The governors who lost Senate bids include Darius Ishaku of Taraba (PDP), Simon Lalong of Plateau (APC), Samuel Ortom of Benue (PDP) and Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi (APC). The others are Ben Ayade of Cross River (APC), Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia (PDP) and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu (PDP). They were all defeated by lesser known politicians in their states.
The National Assembly elections, which were held at the same time as the presidential poll, have delivered perhaps the most diverse parliament in Nigeria’s political history. This can be seen from the tabular summary below, presented by INEC before issuing out certificates of return to 98 senators-elect and 325 representatives-elect.
We believe two main factors account for this new and refreshing electoral picture.
The first is the deployment of technological solutions, such as the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), which has firmly ousted the use of crude force in rigging elections. Now it is impossible to stuff ballot boxes or manufacture voting figures, as the number of accredited voters must match the number of ballot papers cast. The BVAS, which also instantaneously transmits accreditation data directly to INEC’s central server, has been a game changer in this respect.
The snapping and sharing of declared results by voters from the polling units by phone have also strengthened transparency and substantially contained the collation of fictitious figures. Even the results belatedly uploaded to the iREV platform by INEC is now being used by citizens to vet the results declared by the electoral body.
The other critical factor appears to be the insistence of President Muhammadu Buhari that the elections must be free, fair and credible. This is despite his faux pas of violating the Electoral Act on Election Day when he openly displayed his ballot paper for the world to see who he voted for in what was supposed to be a secret ballot. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is the only other elected Nigerian president to have conducted a presidential election for his own exit. In 2007, he declared the election a do-or-die battle for himself and his party, determined the party’s choice of candidates, and is alleged to have blatantly manipulated the poll to ensure a favourable outcome.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo
In contrast, sixteen years later, President Buhari not only rejected any role suggested to him in the nomination of the APC standard bearer, but some of his decisions and policies were also celebrated by the opposition under the assumption that they were targeted at stopping Mr Tinubu. A few days before the election, the governors of Kaduna and Kano states had publicly accused the president of deliberately sabotaging the electoral prospects of his own party.
PREMIUM TIMES believes that while the observed lapses certainly affected many aspects of the poll and must be comprehensively addressed, the 25 February presidential election does not qualify as a sham and is definitely not one of the worst in Nigeria’s history. The election rather points towards the direction of a fairly free, fair and credible one.
It is important to assert this, remembering that the military cited failed elections as impetus for the coup d’états of 1966 and 1983 that ended Nigeria’s earlier experiments with democratic civil rule. This election, on the contrary, should be taken as another step forward in Nigeria’s democratic journey. Any dispute arising from it must therefore be effectively addressed through the established judicial process.
President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed confidence that with scarcity of money now in circulation, efforts of desperate politicians to buy votes in the ongoing election in the country would not yield much result.
Speaking shortly after casting his vote today, March 18, in his Daura country home, Buhari said: “I am aware that the money is not there like before for people to sway voters, like they used to do. “And if they bring out money now, the people should pocket it, and still vote their conscience.” The President asked the electorate to follow their conscience in choosing the right leaders, both at the state executives and legislatures levels. He said that the era of vote buying had been diminished. According to the President, Nigerians have come to understand that it is only the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that meant well for the country. He said that he was not surprised at the results of the Presidential elections on February 25, 2023, which was won by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, insisting that the APC followed the constitutional procedure for the entire electoral process. According to him, the psrty chose party Chairman, Senators Abdullahi Adamu, who had served as a two-term Governor in Nasarawa State, and legislator in the Senate, with an experience that will secure the electoral value and relevance of the party. “Nigerians trust us because we mean what we say and say what we mean. We have maintained that trust. We told Nigerians that we will work for them, and we have done our best in education and health facilities, and Nigerians appreciate our efforts.” On deepening of democratic culture and rising awareness among Nigerians, the President said that the media had played a major role in empowering people with information on their rights, and providing a platform for voters to challenge leaders on promises and records. “The media is doing very well in creating awareness and enabling the right conversation. You can hear the tough questions for leaders during interviews on TV, radio and other platforms, and the journalists always press for answers.”
The South African Police Service have announced the arrest of two persons suspected to be armed robbers, Charles Mbungeni Mabuza and Howard Mashego, over the killing of a Police Officer, Judas Chiloane, who was making love in a South African bush.
The officer was reportedly shot twice in the back seat of his Ford Ranger Bakkie yesterday, March 16, in Mpumalanga, South Africa, while making love to a lady. The lady escaped unharmed.
According to a Police special squad spokesperson, Captain Dineo Sekgotodi, the two suspects said they used to go to the spot to rob couples who frequent the area for car sex.
The Police said: “The two men told us that they would normally go to the spot near Graskop Road (where Chiloane was shot dead) to rob couples who use the area to engage in jola-joling (sex) in their cars.”
According to Sekgotodi, the two suspected robbers ambushed Chiloane and his side chick, snatched his gun, and fired shots at his thigh and upper body.
When the woman called for assistance, the police arrived and pronounced their colleague dead at the scene.
Seye O’Dairo, the campaign director-general of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial candidate in Lagos State, Abdul-Azeez ‘Jandor’ Adediran, has dumped the party, just few hours to the State Governor and Houses of Assembly election, scheduled for tomorrow, March 18.
In a letter addressed to Adediran on Wednesday, the PDP former campaign director-general appreciated the gubernatorial candidate for giving him the opportunity to coordinate his campaign.
O’Dairo, who dumped the party, refused to state his reason for abadoning Adediran’s campaign on election eve.
“Please accept this as my formal resignation letter as the Director General of The Jandor for Governor Campaign Council.
“I have diligently worked tirelessly day and night since the inauguration of the campaign council.
“l appreciate the time and opportunity to have worked with you and the entire campaign team but have to formerly take my leave now and I hope this decision meets you well.”
Nigeria has closed all land borders into the country and across states ahead of the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections, scheduled for tomorrow, March 18 across the country.
A memo by the spokesperson of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Anthony Akuneme, said that the 24-hour border closure will end at midnight on Sunday, March 19.
The directive, issued by the service Comptroller-General, Isah Idris, read: “The Federal Government has directed the total closure of all land borders effective from 00:00 hours on Saturday, March 18, 2023, to 00:00 hours on Sunday, March 19, 2023.
“Accordingly, all command comptrollers, especially those in the border states are to ensure strict enforcement of this directive.”
While the closure involves borders with neighbouring Cameroun, Niger, Chad and the Benin Republic, state governments will be responsible for the control of movement in and out of their jurisdictions during the 24-hour period.
The Ministry of Interior had earlier hinted today, that states will ensure the stoppage of the movement of persons and goods into their borders during the electoral exercise.
The March 18 governorship election, which will be conducted in 28 states, is the second leg of the 2023 general elections.
Nigeria’s First Lady, Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, has acknowledged the contributions of the African Union (AU) Commission to peace-building and conflict resolution on the African continent.
She commended the Commission for its efforts at strengthening the African First Ladies Peace Mission (AFLPM).
Aisha Buhari, who spoke today, March 17, when she received in audience, a 6-man delegation from the Commission, in Abuja, however, stressed the need for more women’s involvement, saying that women are the main victims of conflict.
The First Lady, who is the President of the African First Ladies Peace Mission, called for the recognition of first ladies as facilitators.
“Africa has many present and past First Ladies who are willing and ready to provide their services to this cause and all they need is a platform like the Africa First Ladies Peace Mission.”
Aisha Buhari said that the building of the headquarters of the Mission was conceived by Nigeria to provide such a platform that will also serve as a secure environment for women of all shades and ages to connect. The building, which she said is 90 percent complete, is to be commissioned in May 2023.
She thanked the President of the Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, for his positive contributions to the conflict prevention, management, and resolution in Africa.
The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Kogi Central senatorial area, in the February 25 election, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan has dragged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the winner of the election, Abubakar Saidku-Ohere of the All Progressives Congress (APC) before the election petition tribunal.
In the petition today, March 17, Natasha is requesting that the election petition tribunal should declare her the winner of the election, arguing that Ohere was incorrectly declared the victor by INEC.
She said that Ohere didn’t receive the majority of the legitimate votes cast at the election.
Natasha said that INEC incorrectly calculated the total votes she received at Ajaokuta LGA, resulting in the incorrect declaration of Ohere as the winner.
She said that the INEC wrongly computed voting data during the election, erroneously awarding 933 votes meant for PDP to APC.
She claimed that she received a total of 54,064 votes as opposed to the 51,763 votes reported by INEC, and requested that the tribunal proclaim her winner of the election.
The electoral umpire had declared Ohere as winner of the election as announced by Rotimi Ajayi, returning officer for Kogi Central senatorial district.
Ajayi declared that Ohere got 52,132 votes against Natasha’s 51,763 to clinch the seat, a difference of 369 votes between them.
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An electoral monitoring Civil Society Organization (CSO), Connected Development (CODE) has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for adapting fast to the new technology in handling voting.
