False alarm and the 2023 poll

It is 138 days away from the 2023 general election and this country, understandably, is in the thick of what they call the ‘silly season’ of electioneering. The national elections into the presidency and National Assembly seats will hold on 25th February 2023, while the state elections into governorships in 28 states and house of assembly seats in all the 36 states are scheduled for 11th March, 2023. There are 18 registered political parties vying for the various offices, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has more than 90million voters on roll who are eligible to participate in the elections that will hold in 176,846 polling units across 8,809 wards in the 774 council areas nationwide. By all accounts, we face a date with history.

Campaigning in public by the political parties and their candidates formally kicked off on 28th September, with gladiators hot on the stump already in their quest for votes. And you could say they are just getting into the action. As far as this particular election season goes, however, there is greater need than ever before for political actors to be guided by enlightened self-interest. For one, the security situation in the country is extremely fragile, hence there have been calls on contenders to avoid religious or ethnic baiting of the populace as could further aggravate the nationhood fault lines and fuel violence. Besides, there are germane issues of governance to be addressed and the gladiators are enjoined to avoid personality attacks and other mundane sentimentalities, but rather stick to issue-based campaigning as could help voters to make informed choices on election day. Thankfully, the political actors have themselves severally subscribed to the ethos recommended and it is hoped they will be true to their word. That is where the survival of this country lies.

But there is also the challenge of excessive zeal of political supporters that is driving the menace of fake news and false alarms in the country. Already, it looks like the 2023 poll will be unmatched in the history of Nigerian elections as regards zeal overdrive of supporters, and that is only compounding the typical desperation of the gladiators. Fake news and false alarms are being weaponized with the aim to prospect for partisan gain, even when the extant legal framework and INEC’s processes make the prospects being touted in the alarm unlikely to succeed. By their enterprise, authors of such false alarms aim at poisoning the well of electoral credibility. This is a venture that should be discouraged and laid bare at every possible turn to safeguard the integrity of the Nigerian electoral process. 

A recent instance is the alarm over the likelihood of ballot stuffing that was peddled by a political supporter who alleged that ballot papers for the 2023 elections were already being thumb-printed in some states with an agenda to stuff same in ballot boxes towards crookedly influencing the poll outcome. This alarm, which the author made clear he wanted to go viral on social media, can only be false and I will show why shortly. Let’s first take the thrust of the allegation – warts and all, but with partisan identifications therein withheld to preserve the essence of this discourse. The alleger, who incidentally didn’t disclose his name, had stated inter alia: “Just returned back from Jigawa State where I had my NYSC, went for a business transaction. My dear and fellow <<supporters>>, we still have a lot of work to do in Jigawa, Katsina and Bauchi states… In Katsina and Jigawa states, 7k to 10k is being paid to individuals and families door to door as at last Friday and Monday, this week. Thumbprinting is already ongoing in the ballot papers (this is the greatest shocker beyond human comprehension, 2023 ballot papers already available with just party logos.) The idea and antecedent is that on election day, while voters verification is done, paid voters will go home and the already thumb printed ballot papers will be dropped inside the ballot boxes and results will be transmitted electronically with massive numbers for <<certain political parties>>…”

“2023 polls: It is our collective responsibility to spare process abusers no quarter.”

Just by the way, major claims in the allegation are redundant. Ballot papers for Nigerian elections are always with “just party logos,” with voters expected to thumb-print in the blank box adjacent to the logo of the party of their preferred candidate. Besides, under election day processes of INEC, registered voters who desire to count one way or another in the poll cannot go home while “verification” – we could assume the alleger meant ‘accreditation’ – is being done. The procedure that the electoral body has put in place is: (i) you get to the polling unit, which opens from 8:30am, and present your Permanent Voter Card (PVC) for accreditation by PU officials using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS) device; (ii) you ascertain that your name is on the voter register for that polling unit; (iii) you get authenticated with the BIVAS through either your fingerprint or facials; (iv) once authenticated, you will get issued with a ballot paper; and (v) you proceed to a voting cubicle to indicate your choice on the ballot paper in secret, then come out of the cubicle to drop the ballot paper you’ve marked in the ballot box that is placed in open view of all. Notice that while you mark the ballot paper in secret, you must cast it in the open – that is the reason the system is called open-secret ballot. After casting your ballot, the rules allow that you either depart home or stay at a decent distance (300 metres) from the voting area to observe on-goings through to the counting and sorting of ballots cast and announcement of the polling unit result. The point here is: if there is any attempt to stuff ballots, party agents and voters staying behind after casting their ballots should be there to blow the alarm. Ideally, security agents not bearing lethal weapons should be in the polling unit environs. But in the event that these and/or polling unit officials themselves are complicit in attempted malpractice, there are escalation paths of telecoms to get redress from the electoral commission. 

Even then, there is a more reliable safeguard against ballot stuffing in the 2022 Electoral (Amendment) Act. By the latest rework of that law, overvoting is benchmarked on the number of voters accredited for any election in a particular polling unit, no longer the number of registered voters in the unit as was the case before the latest amendment. Section 51, sub-section (1) outlaws multiple voting, prescribing that: “No voter shall vote for more than one candidate or record more than one vote in favour of any candidate at any one election.” Sub-section (2) of the same section provides that: “Where the number of votes cast at an election in any polling unit exceeds the number of accredited voters in that polling unit, the Presiding Officer shall cancel the result of the election in that polling unit.” In other words, for a polling unit result to be valid, the total number of ballots used and reckoned in an election must tally with the number of accredited voters for that election who must pass through the BIVAS on election day. Wherever the total number of ballots in the ballot box exceeds the BIVAS accredited voters, there is said to be ‘overvoting’ and the result from that unit stands null. The implication is that ballots stuffed in ballot boxes without passing through the BIVAS cannot count. And then, as regards alleged pre-election thumbprinting of ballot papers, Section 55 of the same Electoral Act stipulates that: “No voter shall record his or her vote otherwise than by personally attending at the polling unit or voting centres and recording his or her vote in the manner prescribed by the Commission.”

The combined effect of cited provisions, among others, is that there is a deliberate design in the legal framework against ballot stuffing. Of course, the law gets routinely violated in this country, but mass awareness of the provisions themselves helps in policing the process against malpractices. That is why it is said knowledge is power. It is our collective responsibility to spare process abusers no quarter.