With each passing day, Nigerians are getting disenchanted about participating in our electoral democracy. Why? Most will say they lost interest in the process because it is usually rigged. How can we solve this problem of rigging elections?

There are about 2.6 million registered voters in Edo State according to INEC. Only 22% of which voted in the election of 21st September 2024. You will supposed that the 78% that did not turn out for election can significantly change the outcome of the election. I do not think so for the following reasons:

1. The highest turnout was in the 2016 election with 32%. The 2020 election was 24%. This is largely because of introduction of BVAS Machine to check multiple voting and ensure biometric accreditation.
2. The decline in percentage of voters turn out since the introduction of BVAS Machine shows that most of initial high votes recorded are fictitious.
3. So many political parties and candidates have participated in various elections and none was able to appeal to or convince or even buy out the votes of this majority percentage that is said to abstain. This is most unlikely if truly there are such number of registered voters that are not coming out for election.

Be that as it may, rigging remains a major challenge. The BVAS Machine has sanitized the voting process in polling units. The politicians have now shifted their focus to collation centers where figures are inflated, swapped, manipulated to favor powers that be. You will notice that voting which involves all registered voters takes a few hours to be completed. However, collation takes days. Ordinarily, collation is just about adding the total number of votes scored in various polling units. This should not present any difficulty with available technological devices.

Our voting procedure is therefore okay save for vote buying which most politicians are guilty of. There is however, a need for legislative intervention in the collation processes. Since collation is merely an addition of all votes scored from all polling units, there is no point doing that in stages of ward, local government, state and national level. There is also no point relying on Professors or academicians who are not versed in mathematics. An Excel sheet can do the job better. There are other technologies that can perform computational tasks very well. The system can be programmed to automatically reject a polling unit result that does not tally with total number of accredited voters. The system can also be programmed to accept number of accredited voters automatically from BVAS Machine without any room for human to override it. This will cut inflation of votes at the collation centers.

You can engage your National Assembly members with this proposal before the next election. Don’t wait until you become a victim of election fraud. Political parties that participated and their candidates should also challenge in Court any electoral fraud or misconduct noticed in the process. This challenge may not be anchored primarily because same is bound to succeed. It is because, same can force a change in judicial attitude over time. For instance, it was because of many cases that travel to Supreme Court on abuse of Local Governments in Nigeria that made the Supreme Court to change attitude and handed down the decision on financial autonomy of local government contrary to ordinary literal meaning of section 162 of the Constitution that funds accruing to local government be paid into States Local Government joint account.

One decision of the courts that I will want to see changed is on the requirement that to prove over voting, a petitioner must provide the machine through the INEC official that operated the machine and the same should also be operated before the Court. If you are familiar with election procedure in Nigeria, you will remember that one BVAS Machine is used for different elections. For instance, Presidential election, Senatorial and House of Representative election is held on same day using one BVAS Machine for accreditation. Where there is a petition for each election, who will get the BVAS Machine to present in his case? If the presidential candidate gets the BVAS Machine first, what will happen to the Senatorial candidate or House of Representative candidate? Will he forfeit his right to challenge any over voting in his election because a presidential candidate has gotten the machine already? The fallacy of the judicial precedent is further exposed when one remembers that same machine is to be returned and used for Governorship and House of Assembly Election just two weeks after Presidential election. In this case INEC will wipe out the data from the BVAS machine and reconfigure them for the next round of elections. This will happen before the Courts get opportunity to get to see the BVAS Machine in respect of the Presidential election.The requirement of providing BVAS Machine to prove over voting needs serious reconsideration. This can only happen by challenging the process in Court and inviting the Courts to reconsider their decision for a better one.

In a whole, the politicians, law makers and judiciary should use the lessons from Edo election to come up with a better template for the next round of elections in Nigeria.

P. D. Pius, Esq., ACIArb.(UK)
Abuja, Nigeria
pius@pdpiusandassociates.com
www.pdpiusandassociates.com