Dino’s theatrics

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Senator Dino Melaye, has never been someone constrained by civility in public comportment. He expresses himself impulsively, and at times with grotesque exertions bordering on the comical. One image of him that endures in memory was from way back in 2007, at the early stages of his National Assembly (NASS) career. There on the rostrum in the House of Representatives was torn-vested Honourable Melaye who, as a member of the green chamber, dug in at the side of then House Speaker Patricia Etteh and waved his shirt that he had pulled off as he fiercely defended Etteh against internal rebellion by a so-called Integrity Group. Not that he succeeded with that pitch, because the first and till date only ‘Madam Speaker’ in Nigeria’s history was displaced by the insurrection after barely five months in the saddle. Later when he  moved to the Senate chamber and crisscrossed between PDP and the All Progressives Congress (APC), and even in the last few years he has been out of NASS, he has remained an active partisan and rambunctious personality with high visibility – largely for his vociferous theatrics. 

Melaye lived up to billing early last week as PDP agent at the national collation centre operated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) pertaining to the 25th February presidential election. The centre became operational from Sunday, 26th February, for collation of the poll results and was presided over by INEC Chairman Professor Mahmood Yakubu, who by constitutional provision was the chief returning officer of the election. Following the announcement of results from Ekiti State, which was the first state to be collated, Melaye raised objections that figures announced by the commission did not match what his party had. INEC had declared APC candidate and now President-elect Bola Tinubu winner in Ekiti with 201,494 votes, defeating Abubakar Atiku of PDP who scored 89,554 votes, Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) with 11,397 votes and Rabiu Kwankwaso of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) who polled 264 votes. Melaye alleged that his party’s calculation showed a discrepancy of 887 votes in the total announced. 

The INEC chair, however, stood by the results brought in by Professor Akeem Olawale Lasisi, who was the state collation officer of the presidential election (SCOPE), saying: “This is what is on the spreadsheet that we screened yesterday, and this is also what is on the actual result manual recorded by the SCOPE and signed by the PDP agent and agents of other political parties back in Ekiti State.” Melaye got fellow travellers on his protest train in the agents of LP and Action Alliance (AA), who backed his observation as he held up the collation process. But Professor Yakubu did not want the process delayed as he restated the official total number of accredited voters, adding: “I’ve taken note of your observations, let’s make progress. What we have here is exactly what I’ve said. Any other figure that is at variance with this one cannot supersede the official result presented.”

As the process progressed, Melaye headed up an expanded protest, demanding that results of the presidential election uploaded from the polling units be projected on a screen before collation could continue. INEC had just before then acknowledged delays in uploading results to its portal with the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device it deployed for the poll, explaining that the difficulty was a technical hitch that was being redressed. “The commission is aware of challenges with the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV). Unlike in off-season elections where the portal was used, it has been relatively slow and unsteady… The problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season state elections to one for managing nationwide general elections,” INEC National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, said in a statement. He added inter alia: “It is not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations. Consequently, the commission wishes to assure Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems, and that the IReV remains well-secured. Our technical team is working assiduously to solve all the outstanding problems, and users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since last night.”

“Melaye’s antics is the oldest tack in the playbook for enacting an inconclusive election.”

 It must be that Melaye saw a chink in INEC’s armour, because he seized on the portal issue to demand suspension of collation until uploaded results are projected on a screen. “The only way for us to see that BVAS has been bypassed is to see uploaded results. We insist the INEC chairman display uploaded results by state as the results are being presented,” he ranted. The PDP agent won over some other party agents who rallied behind his demand as they plied allegations of over-voting in Ekiti and Kwara states in results presented by the SCOPEs. Professor Yakubu argued that suspicions of over-voting should have been flagged at either the polling units during ballot counting, the registration areas during council area collation, or at the state collation centres – levels where the parties had their agents. He called recesses in-between the tense collation and gave agents of different political parties room to make their respective case, which he responded to. But he resisted the demand to hang up collation, amid repeated interruptions by Melaye who at some point threatened to “violently” stop the proceedings. His conduct indeed elicited a mild rebuke from Yakubu who called him out as being deliberately disruptive. It was during a recess called to defuse tension that Melaye got some party agents on board to walk out on the process if the INEC chair would not submit to their demand.

But it was all too clear to any discerning observer. Melaye’s antics is the oldest tack in the playbook for enacting an inconclusive election. We have the evidence of the June 12, 1983 presidential poll that the Ibrahim Babangida military regime annulled to show that. The demand to suspend collation is only an opening gambit in the plot to edge the poll into inconclusion. Once that is conceded by the electoral body, the objectors would ply additional and expanded challenges against the election such that it would be impossible for the electoral body to restart collation and ultimately return a winner. INEC is wise to this game plan. That is the reason it rebuffs pressure to shelve collation and go after sorting out complaints, which are inevitable anyway and are for most times marginal to the thrust of results being collated.

Only that partisans never give up on opening the gambit. In 2011, it was the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) that demanded suspension of results collation until INEC supplies it with biometric details of registered voters, which the electoral law mandates the commission to hold in confidence just so to ensure secrecy of electoral choice by the voters. In 2015 it was by way of the famous rant by former Niger Delta Affairs Minister Godsday Orubebe who, as PDP agent, hijacked collation proceedings and demanded that former INEC Chairman Professor Attahiru Jega leave the collation floor for allegedly failing to address his party’s complaints over results from Kano, Katsina, Kaduna and Gombe states. At the last count, we have Melaye and the gang. Partisans possibly would have circumvented INEC’s stonewalling by getting court injunction stopping collation, as was the case in 1983. But the electoral body is now insulated by legal framework from being hamstrung from carrying out its constitutional duties. Besides, their lordships must have learnt a few lessons from the 1983 fiasco about issuing such injunctions.

By the way, the objection of PDP and other parties to the 2023 presidential poll was largely hinged on INEC’s failure to swiftly upload results onto its IReV portal. Was that from a sinister motive? I would say, not so. The commission’s explanation about technical glitch associated with scaling up the portal for general election purposes stands to reason and was borne out by the fact than more than 80 percent of the polling unit results had been uploaded five days after the election. The defectiveness of technology in the face of increased traffic of usage is notorious. That is the syndrome we presently duel with in digital banking  following Central Bank of Nigeria’s intensification of cashlessness in the economy through its ill-conceived naira redesign policy. Technology is cold and indifferent, it makes no exception.