Preliminary Reflections on the PEPT Judgment and the 2023 Presidential Election

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Preliminary Reflections on the PEPT Judgment and the 2023 Presidential Election

 

By Moses E. Ochonu

 

The February 2023 presidential election looked like Atiku’s to lose but through a combination of an inexplicable sense of entitlement and inevitability, he 1) mismanaged the conflict in his traditional PDP camp and allowed it to splinter, and 2) allowed Peter Obi, his former running mate, to walk away from the PDP fold, taking with him the traditional PDP strongholds of the Southeast and South-south and the Northern Christian zones.

 

Those inexplicable miscalculations sealed Atiku’s electoral fate. I will never understand how he and his people couldn’t see that these two factors were near-fatal blows, and how, instead of tackling or mitigating them, he continued to campaign confidently afterwards as though he could see things that the rest of us couldn’t.

 

As for Obi, he had no viable path to the presidency and every objective analyst could see that. His role and goal were to disrupt the familiar and uninspiring two-party configuration and to catalyze enthusiasm and youth engagement. Judged on those metrics, he was a highly successful disruptor who punched way above his weight in the last election. But the electoral math was always against him as he had no presence or support in the vote-rich Northwest and Northeast. 

 

We knew he could win more states than the other candidates, but winning more states does not give you the presidency under Nigeria’s electoral rules. Winning more votes and securing the required 25 percent spread are the two criteria. There was no way he could do that.

 

I was one of those who thought Atiku could beat Tinubu big in the Northwest and Northeast, but he didn't. The Muslim-Muslim ticket and a last-minute Northern political and religious consensus proved decisive as a bulwark against Atiku. Even though, overall, he won the two zones of Northwest and Northeast, he did so by a hair, and his wins in some states there were not nearly enough to score a knockout over Tinubu, who kept it close by scoring big margins in APC strongholds in those two zones and in the Southwest and parts of Northcentral, while keeping Atiku’s win margins small. 

 

Atiku, moreover, essentially surrendered Kano, where Tinubu secured hundreds of thousands of valuable votes to increase his national tally. Atiku also predictably had trouble gaining the constitutionally required spread, largely due to the Obi factor.

 

In the end, it was the Tinubu people who read the electoral map accurately and planned for it accordingly. They focused on:

 

1. Securing significant vote numbers even in states they knew they would lose, to deny their opponents win margins that the opponents might not be able to make up in Tinubu’s strongholds, where his people, by legitimate and crooked means, went on to amass big win margins.

 

2. Gaining the required 25 percent. They did this by trying to use every means they could, including rigging in unlikely places where they had APC governors, such as Cross River, Imo, Ebonyi, Nasarawa, and Plateau. Wike was supposed to give Tinubu 25 percent in Rivers through his famed rigging machine but got carried away, determined to stick it to Atiku and impress Tinubu.

 

Premium Times and other media platforms analyzed the results uploaded to the I-Rev server after the fact and recorded on BVAS and found numerous discrepancies between INEC-declared results and results uploaded on its server for multiple states. 

 

Notable among their findings was that 1) Obi won by a bigger margin in Lagos than what was announced, 2) Obi and not Tinubu won Benue, though it was close, and 3) Rivers was actually Obi's landslide, not a Tinubu’s win. Nonetheless, even if you change these three states, Obi still doesn't come to Tinubu in total votes, nor does he overcome his 25 percent spread problem. 

 

Other independent analyses of uploaded results found that in Southern states like Ebonyi, Imo and Cross River, states with APC governors, Tinubu’s actual votes were well under the numbers credited to him by the declared results for those states. But the consensus is that even without the doctored numbers from these states, Tinubu might still have either met the two-third votes in two-third of states constitutional requirement or go into a run-off as a slight favorite on the back of his performance in the first round. 

 

I personally think that Atiku would have been a slight favorite if it gone to a runoff as a two-man contest since most of Peter Obi’s votes and states would have gone to him. And that was why the APC dreaded a runoff and rigged, manipulated, and engaged in other shenanigans to win in the first ballot and avoid a runoff.

 

 

The Logic of Plausibility and Possibility

 

Elections in Nigeria since 2003 have been won on the two interrelated premises of plausibility and possibility and not on the absence of rigging, manipulation, and other shenanigans or on the premise of free and fair voting and accurate vote totals. The two deterministic premises can be restated as questions: 

 

1. Could/would the person declared winner have won in a free and fair contest?

 

2. Did the declared outcome broadly and roughly mirror or align with the will of the Nigerian people, given the alliances that preceded the election?

 

Whenever the answer to these two questions is a “yes” or a strong “maybe,” the election’s outcome is accepted as being well within the margin of expectation and accorded pragmatic, de facto, even if reluctant, credibility. 

 

Nigeria’s presidential elections are fairly easy to predict, given the alliances that precede them and the ethno-religious and regional cleavages and tendencies that produce block votes in particular directions.

 

As a result, in the lead-up to a presidential election, most attentive observers can predict the election’s possible outcomes while allowing for a margin of error to account for the unknown and unforeseen.

 

In the case of the 2023 election, the realistic pre-election permutations pointed in the direction of a Tinubu or an Atiku win, so the consensus was that if either of them was declared winner by INEC, the outcome would pass the plausibility and possibility test, and political elites across the different regions would broadly accept it because they knew it was possible and within the electoral mathematics of the moment.

This logic of plausibility and possibility also dictates whether and to what extent the electoral umpire, INEC, is willing to acquiesce in rigging, manipulation, and other acts of complicity in electoral malfeasance. INEC honchos too can read the political environment and the unfolding electoral dynamics in the run-up to any presidential election. 

 

If the dynamics point to one clear possibility, INEC will not make a declaration in the opposite direction. They will not risk the conflagration that could result. Moreover, in such a scenario, they would come under pressure from political elites who have reached a rough consensus on the possible and plausible outcomes of the election. 

 

INEC rarely goes against such elite consensus and popular understanding of which outcome is possible and which is not. INEC, in short, usually manipulates elections or makes declarations in elections in favor of candidates it knows have a decent chance of winning and refrains from doing so when the political tea leaves contradict that outcome. 

 

This is the explanation for the seemingly perplexing fact that, in both presidential and sub-national elections, INEC mostly rigs or authenticates rigging and manipulations in contests in which the declared winner’s victory was in the realm of possibility but always resists the urge to declare an implausible, unpopular, and long-shot candidate a winner, no matter how much pressure and inducement is thrown its way by incumbents, desperate candidates, or even the federal government. 

 

We have examples from multiple states under different presidencies, where opposition candidates were declared winners against incumbents, some of them supported by federal might, because everyone knew that only the victory of the opposition candidate was plausible and would be considered legitimate.

 

In all elections since 1999, the plausibility factor made it possible for Nigerians and the political elite to accept and reconcile themselves to the officially declared outcome. This plausibility factor legitimized the outcomes of the flawed elections we’ve had since the fourth republic began. 

 

Nigerians would shrug their shoulders and say, “oh well, this candidate was going to win or could have won anyway, so it doesn’t matter much that he was aided by manipulation and rigging. The rigging only padded a victory that could or would have happened regardless.”

 

This was the case in 2007 in an election that the winner himself admitted was marred by manipulation. The question Nigerians posed at the time was whether Yar'Adua could/would have won without the irregularities and rigging, and the unanimous answer was yes. He was, after all, running against Buhari, who at the time was a provincial northern candidate without a national appeal or political infrastructure. 

 

Even in the 2019 election that Buhari rigged massively to deny Atiku victory, many Nigerians rightly believed that despite his woeful performance in his first term, Buhari remained a live underdog and was competitive in that election because Atiku was not an inspiring candidate and because the country was divided on the question of going back to the PDP after four years. This reality made Buhari’s victory plausible, even if unlikely, and caused Nigerians to acclimate to his declaration as winner by INEC.

 

In the 2023 presidential election, the plausibility and possibility of Tinubu's victory was always apparent but was magnified by the splintering of the traditional PDP political tendency into three factions—Atiku, Obi, and Kwankwaso, with the last of the trio dominating vote-rich Kano but not without Tinubu getting a sizeable share of the votes there.

 

 

The Absurdity of the Dual Citizenship Ruling

 

I agree with those who have called attention to the absurdity of the judges’ dual citizenship ruling, which states that the petitioners did not submit Tinubu’s second passport as evidence. This is incredible! Did the judges expect Tinubu to hand over his passport to his challengers so they could submit it to the tribunal? Was it not enough that they submitted copies of it and that Tinubu's lawyers admitted that indeed their client had obtained said foreign citizenship? 

 

I had expected the judges to rely on an earlier court ruling that one interlocutor pointed to about only citizenship obtained by naturalization counting as dual citizenship under Nigerian law, but they opted for a ludicrous technicality.

 

 

Undoing Nigerians’ Tentative Hope for Electoral Transparency 

 

For me though the most disturbing part of their ruling is with respect to electronic transmission of results. If the learned judges are saying that no Nigerian law mandates the transmission of results electronically, are they saying that the crafters of the revised electoral law signed by Buhari in 2022, which was widely hailed as a game changer for mandating instantaneous electronic result transmission, lied to Nigerians or that the provision was removed? 

 

Does this not mean we're back to where we began on electoral integrity and credibility? Does this not mean that future elections, much like past ones, are now legal rigging contests? Does this not make nonsense of all the work activists put in to legalize electronic transmission of results for purposes of electoral transparency and verifiability? I see this reckless ruling opening the door to unprecedented voter apathy. 

 

The considerable enthusiasm and youth participation in the 2023 election was in part a function of Obi’s effective social media campaign and his embodiment of a third option, but it was also catalyzed by the excitement over the mandated electronic transmission of results from polling units to the central server. 

 

For once, it seemed to young people that their votes would count not because the politicians wanted them to count but because the law required technology that would make votes count.

With that provision in the electoral law now ruled illegal and legally unnecessary, how many enlightened and young voters will care to vote in future elections?

 

Moreover, are the judges saying that the N300 billion INEC "spent" on the BVAS and I-REV infrastructure was wasted and was an illegal expenditure with no utilitarian or legal value to the country? What do the judges make of the fact that, for the House of Reps and Senate elections held on the same day as the presidential one, real-time electronic transmission of results worked perfectly but either broke down or was sabotaged for the presidential election?

 

Anyway, a message has been sent clearly to politicians. Forge the right alliances and then rig and manipulate the electoral system to get yourself declared winner. If it's a presidential contest, history and precedent tell us that the judiciary will preserve the status quo and search and find both reasonable legal bases and ridiculous technical grounds to do that. You cannot hope for judicial redress after the fact. That’s a depressing and deflating message.

 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Beautiful 

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[Chika Okeke-Agulu]

Brilliant, perceptive, sound! Thanks for this.

[Michael Afolayan]

Outstanding write-up. The analysis is right on the money. I have nothing (or know nothing) to add to it. Thanks, Moses!

MOA

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[Toyin Falola]

Moses:

Three additional comments to what is already comprehensive:

 

1. Is “rigging” not part of the election variable in most parts of the world? It is the name we call it that is different. In the US, they call it “voter suppression”. The ability to win an election must factor in rigging at two levels:

Master the art of rigging

And/or

Prevent your opponent from rigging you out. Saying “I am rigged out,” does not work in competitive politics. Politics is not a game of morality or emotions.

 

It is depressing, but this is what shall continue to happen.

 

2. In many so-called democracies, the choice is usually not between two good people, but two bad people. What this does is to produce a low voter turnout, as in the case of Nigeria—both Atiku and Tinubu are bad, and Obi is just a little different—he was a party insider in the PDP! Thus, the mass withdrawal, as you will see when Trump runs next year: should I vote for a bad Trump or a Biden who is in the entrance to heaven? And in the unlikely event that a third party emerges (always difficult in the US because only a super-rich person can do this), Trump is most likely to win.

 

3. But the biggest challenge is not even the previous, but about governance. We are still not sure who can generate governance, as this is disconnected from character. Terrible characters like Mussolini and Hitler generated governance and one generated genocide in addition. In the case of Nigeria, today, if Jesus Christ is the President and Prophet Mohammad is the Vice-President, the structure and corruption will not produce governance that will move the country forward.

TF

 

 

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Oga,

My simple provocation is that, as long as we practice this liberal democratic system, we have to at least ask ourselves whether we should continue to have elections in which plausibility and possibility, rather than free, fair, and credible voting, an accurate tabulation of the votes, and a transparent transmission of same are the criterion for determining the outcome. 

In that respect, I wouldn't equate voter suppression tactics with ballot stuffing, cooking of numbers, and other crude ways of rigging and manipulating an election. Donald Trump and Co's rigging claims and attempts to manipulate figures were outliers, anomalies, and failed precisely because of that fact. Even his supporters know that voting in America is free and fair and that vote transmission and tabulation are credible. I don't do false equivalency, which is not analytically helpful.

However, I agree 💯 with your contention that liberal democracy is INHERENTLY flawed as it is not only elitist, exclusionary in its norms of candidate recruitment, but also consistently throws up the worst of us, the most unrepresentative personalities. But perhaps its worst flaw is the zero-sum, winner-takes-all, adversarial principle that unpins electoral contests. It is the root of electoral desperation and of both the crude rigging in Nigeria and the voter suppression and electoral misinformation in the West.

Whether in America, Hungary, or Nigeria, regular people often wonder, "are these the best candidates this society can produce?" The answer is that they are not. Most societies lament the quality of candidates that run for the presidency but as you stated, only amoral, ruthless, elitist, and even downright obnoxious and ethically compromised candidates can often make it to the top of major party tickets. And then voters are compelled to choose between them.

It is a foundational problem of liberal democracy.

America and other Western countries can survive and thrive in spite of this foundational problem of liberal democracy because they have decentralized and resilient institutions, and they have economic organs tthat mitigate the impact of presidential chaos, corruption, and incompetence. Nigeria does not. 

I have been railing against the unsuitability of liberal democracy to Nigeria/Africa for at least 15 years, with a mixed reception among colleagues and interlocutors. We simply can't afford the expensive, adversarial, winner-takes-all, one-man-one-vote electoral pluralism of liberal democracy. It impoverishes us, divides our people further, and expands the field of corruption. It even weaponizes the poverty of our people against them. Look at what it has done to many African countries. Look at what 24 years of it has done to Nigeria.

I'm glad to see Obasanjo in a recent interview with The Cable saying liberal democracy has failed our people.

I am also glad to see that former Governor Kayode Fayemi has now taken up my years-long call for alternatives to this failed and destructive liberal democratic model. At the 60th birthday event for Dr. Udenta Udenta, he acknowledged that liberal democracy has failed in Nigeria. He recommended moving away from a winner-takes-all electoral democracy to a consensual system in which major political parties or top vote-getting parties harmonize their manifestos and nominate people for a unity government after every election.

The proposal is of course rough around the edges, but it can be refined and merged with other creative ideas and alternatives to this imported and failed liberal democratic model. My own recommendation, which I have published elsewhere, is to have some offices filled through elections and others filled through nominations from communities and constituencies on a rotational basis. Additionally, the elected offices should be allocated not on a winner-takes-all or winner-loser basis but on the basis of big winner and small winner, with top vote getters getting higher offices and smaller vote getters getting smaller offices, etc.

It's good to see the actors themselves criticizing the practice of liberal democracy in our country, but it is also disappointing that they only criticize liberal democracy and embrace alternatives to it when they're out of government. Is it a case of the Nigerian colloquial saying that one does not talk while eating?

Anyway, our own Nimi Wariboko has written about drawing lots in place of expensive, divisive, and adversarial, zero-sum elections. 

All of these proposals and others need to be collated, debated, refined, and consolidated into a manual for a much less expensive, less divisive, less corrupt, more accountable and transparent, and more inclusive and representative system.

I don't mean this as a slight on the likes of our friend, Jibrin Ibrahim, but the mistake his cohort of Nigerian/African "pro-democracy" activists made in the "democratization" moment and struggle of the 1990s and early 2000s is 1) they did not scrutinize the historical trajectory and flaws of liberal democracy in the West, while the West was pushing for democratization with dollars, pounds, and pressure in Africa; and 2) they erroneously and deceptively correlated and even causally linked democracy and development.

These foundational errors are implicated in the unraveling of liberal democracy that we're seeing across Africa. The easy, defensive, and escapist response is to blame the political class and not liberal democracy itself, which, as you state, is problematic regardless of where it is practised, the only difference being that certain countries, for a variety of reasons, are able to survive and cope with the problems of liberal democracy more than others.

Liberal democracy does not produce development or improved lives any more than autocracy produces underdevelopment and impoverishment. Liberal democracy has a symbiotic relationship with capitalism, the latter being the lifeblood of the former. Liberal democracy does not, in and of itself, promote development. And in places like Africa, where poverty is widespread and a small middle class is always under strain and threat, liberal democracy deepens underdevelopment, corruption, and governance deficit as the space of the state is overly and perpetually politicized, relegating governance to the background.

Our African "pro-democracy" scholars and thinkers are unfortunately yet to adjust their lenses and are completely out of step with the feelings of our people about liberal democracy and about its catastrophic failure in our countries.

When coups occur and our people celebrate, their instinctive reaction ranges from shock--of pretended shock--to blaming the political class, to blaming and insulting the "ignorance" of the celebrating victims. Anything but an acknowledgement of the fact that liberal democracy has failed our people and that we're in dire need of alternatives to it.

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[Victor Okafor]

Hello Moses, yours is a thought-provoking reflective piece. And, indeed, it provoked me to submit as follows. 

 

Your last and concluding paragraph, which I hereby reproduce in parenthesis ("Anyway, a message has been sent clearly to politicians. Forge the right alliances and then rig and manipulate the electoral system to get yourself declared winner. If it is a presidential contest, history and precedent tell us that the judiciary will preserve the status quo and search and find both reasonable legal bases and ridiculous technical grounds to do that. You cannot hope for judicial redress after the fact. That’s a depressing and deflating message"), undermines all your postulations that preceded it. In other words, if your real point, your implied message is that Nigeria's latest presidential election was won based on "right alliances," ... rigging and manipulation of "the electoral system to get yourself declared winner," then none of the speculative points that you adduced earlier holds. That is to say that Atiku did not necessarily lose because of his political miscalculations, given that finally, the outcome was not necessarily determined by the totality of the true and actual votes of the electorate. Instead, as you seem to have implied, the "winning" numbers were forged/rigged; and Obi did not necessarily lose because the numerical odds were against him from the get-go, given that the actual presidential electoral outcome was not necessarily determined by any of the variables that you attributed to Atiku and Obi but by "right alliances," rigging, and manipulation of "the electoral system to get yourself declared winner." Notice that you did not say "to get yourself elected;" instead, you stated "to get yourself declared winner." 

 

Taken from another angle, the implication of your conclusion seems to be that even if Atiku had gotten his political calculations right, and even if the numerical odds were in favor of Obi, at the end of the day, the outcome was determined by rigging and manipulation of “the electoral system to get yourself declared winner."

 

I am also persuaded to aver that if your essay were to be coded and subjected to a statistical regression analysis in which Nigeria's 2023 presidential election is set as the dependent variable, besides what is usually allowed as the unknown factor, there would be three independent variables, namely (1) the Atiku factor, (2) the Obi factor, and (3) the factor characterized by attributes of forged alliances, rigging and electoral process manipulation that got one of the candidates declared (but not elected, I must emphasize) as the winner. Given the logic of your concluding paragraph, I put it to you that only factor #3 would prove to be a significant independent variable. Based on the premise of your concluding paragraph, neither factor #1 nor factor #2 would prove to be of any statistical significance.

 

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Sincerely,

Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.

Professor and Head

Department of Africology and African American Studies

Eastern Michigan University

Email: vok...@emich.edu

https://www.emich.edu/aaas/

https://www.facebook.com/DAAASEMU/

Tel: 734.487.9594 

Food for Thought: 

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass

[Victor Okafor]

Hello Moses, yours is a thought-provoking reflective piece. And, indeed, it provoked me to submit as follows. 

 

Your last and concluding paragraph, which I hereby reproduce in parenthesis ("Anyway, a message has been sent clearly to politicians. Forge the right alliances and then rig and manipulate the electoral system to get yourself declared winner. If it is a presidential contest, history and precedent tell us that the judiciary will preserve the status quo and search and find both reasonable legal bases and ridiculous technical grounds to do that. You cannot hope for judicial redress after the fact. That’s a depressing and deflating message"), undermines all your postulations that preceded it. In other words, if your real point, your implied message is that Nigeria's latest presidential election was won based on "right alliances," ... rigging and manipulation of "the electoral system to get yourself declared winner," then none of the speculative points that you adduced earlier holds. That is to say that Atiku did not necessarily lose because of his political miscalculations, given that finally, the outcome was not necessarily determined by the totality of the true and actual votes of the electorate. Instead, as you seem to have implied, the "winning" numbers were forged/rigged; and Obi did not necessarily lose because the numerical odds were against him from the get-go, given that the actual presidential electoral outcome was not necessarily determined by any of the variables that you attributed to Atiku and Obi but by "right alliances," rigging, and manipulation of "the electoral system to get yourself declared winner." Notice that you did not say "to get yourself elected;" instead, you stated "to get yourself declared winner." 

 

Taken from another angle, the implication of your conclusion seems to be that even if Atiku had gotten his political calculations right, and even if the numerical odds were in favor of Obi, at the end of the day, the outcome was determined by rigging and manipulation of “the electoral system to get yourself declared winner."

 

I am also persuaded to aver that if your essay were to be coded and subjected to a statistical regression analysis in which Nigeria's 2023 presidential election is set as the dependent variable, besides what is usually allowed as the unknown factor, there would be three independent variables, namely (1) the Atiku factor, (2) the Obi factor, and (3) the factor characterized by attributes of forged alliances, rigging and electoral process manipulation that got one of the candidates declared (but not elected, I must emphasize) as the winner. Given the logic of your concluding paragraph, I put it to you that only factor #3 would prove to be a significant independent variable. Based on the premise of your concluding paragraph, neither factor #1 nor factor #2 would prove to be of any statistical significance.

 

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[Toyin Falola]

Dear Victor:

I love your computational analysis and I will stay within its original orbit. Suppose I reduce what Moses says to “authoritarian consensus,” how would this work for you?

I doubt, and you may disagree, that we can have a system without a critical elite micromanaging it. Wall Street in the US is a hidden source of control. When a small elite generates a consensus, they resolve on a choice of one among themselves. A fellow thief must govern Nigeria. The country works well if you don’t see it as the instigator of development. What you all lament is the evidence of success!!!

Anywhere in the world, unless you rupture that consensus, the chance of penetration is limited. A person like Obama understood this paradigm so well. 

If age is on his side, a person like Soludo can become the president of Nigeria if he can run errands. They will not care that he is an Igbo man but want to ensure that he manages state capture.

TF

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From: 'Victor Okafor' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 9, 2023 12:43:09 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Preliminary Reflections on the PEPT Judgment and the 2023 Presidential Election

 

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Victor,

Thanks for chiming in. It's possible, as you stated, that regardless of what Atiku and Obi did or didn't do, the outcome might have been the same. I don't know for sure either way, and I would hate to engage in counterfactual speculation on that. 

What I do know and tried to highlight in my reflection is that the plausibility/possibility factor, insofar as it is grounded in certain kinds of alliances, creates a perception of possible victory and even inevitability that then influences INEC in its decision to declare one candidate or the other the winner. It also, as I stated, influences elites' and citizens' decisions to accept and make peace with the declaration. 

So, for instance, if Obi had not broken away from the PDP and Atiku has kept the South South and Southeast and the Christian North (the traditional PDP areas) in his column, he would most certainly not only have been favored by the plausibility and possibility narrative and the perceptual index that underwrites it but might have in fact been considered inevitable. 

The numbers and regional block votes don't lie. He would have added the Southeast and South-south to his narrow victories in the Northeast and Northwest and to his win in Osun, and in all likelihood would have triumphed in some North-central states that Obi won. That scenario would have put him in the poll position. In that scenario, going by my historical analysis of the deterministic nature of the plausibility and possibility factor, INEC would never have declared Tinubu, who would have been a long shot, the winner, no matter the level of rigging and manipulation done by him. And, of course, if Atiku had been declared under that scenario, the PEPT would have likely upheld his election, going by the precedent since 1999.

My point in the last paragraph that you quoted is that with the PEPT pronouncement that electronic voter verification (BVAS) and live result transmission from polling units (I-Rev) are illegal and unnecessary, future elections are now officially and legally not just rigging contests but also a competing quests to have oneself declared winner. The first step in that endeavor, from the point of view of a politician, is to create the appearance of plausibility/possibility and maybe even inevitability through alliance formation and, as Oga said, the management of one's party and camp to prevent splintering and fragmentation.

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[Emmanuel Udogu]

I agree in toto with Professor Okafor’s concluding remarks in his argumentation on this matter. It is the character of African politicians who place high premium on winning an election because it gives them the power to control the national coffers. It is this insular motivation (some of which are noted in this dialogue) that propels them not to follow the templates of liberal democracy and good governance. 

Constitutions and manifestos are generally attractive documents for governing a society. But do politicians always adhere to the dogmas of these documents? My answer is no except, of course, if the tenets or provisions in the constitutions or manifestos work in their favor. I will argue that our problem in Africa is not liberal democracy or constitution per se. Our problem arises from our leaders’ selfish interests that is often furthered by the “theory of privilege;” i.e., those who enjoy a position of privilege will not give it up without a fight, and different strategies and instrumentalities are applied to maintain or retain the position of privilege. 

About a month or so ago, I watched the former Minister of External Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, on Arise News suggest that giving the economic quagmire affecting the masses in Nigeria that it might be necessary for the legislators to cut their humongous salaries by 50% as a gesture of their patriotism and empathy toward the suffering masses. I am not sure that the legislators accepted that recommendation. Indeed, “I can bet you my life” that this patriotic call fell on deaf ears.

Once again, I will argue that liberal democracy is not our problem. Our problems rest squarely on the shoulders of our leaders who fail to adopt it with modifications, if necessary, to suit our African cultures in what the Chinese refer to as the “policy of walking on two legs.” 

Ike Udogu

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[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Not having the stamina to read beyond the first two paragraphs, I daresay that quite often when doing a post-mortem on elections that have come and gone, with the benefit of hindsight the forensic pathologist may even assume a temporary status of omniscience, hence this time as it were performing the autopsy on Atiku Abubakar we are told of his tragic errors that ( only himself to blame) have cost him his most coveted life ambition: The Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, this time around

Where was Olusegun Obasanjo and all of the PDP advisers? How does one explain let alone begin to understand the hitherto astute politician of Alhaji Atiku’s calibre nursing such an “inexplicable sense of entitlement” to the PDP ticket, given the long-standing rule of rotation - that it was not his turn?

As to the “inevitability” part of it, and now all that crying over spilled milk, instead of the inevitable split PDP, split vote, & the divide and rule - advantage Tinubu, could there have not been an easy compromise, a win-win situation with Atiku as flagbearer and Obi as running mate?

[Oyeniyi Bukola Adeyemi]

Moses, I must admit that your essay left me quite astounded.

Just a few weeks before the election, you were emphatic in your assertion that Tinubu had already lost the race. I distinctly recall asking you if the election had even taken place, let alone the results being announced, to warrant such a confident conclusion. Thus, I find it somewhat incredulous that you have penned this piece, attributing Tinubu's victory to strategic brilliance in defeating both Atiku and Obi - the same Tinubu that you loudly said he had lost the election before a single vote was cast.

What struck me as unusual was your fervent emphasis on Tinubu's victory in regions where he secured a win, (of course, characteristically, you attributed his winning to rigging) while simultaneously attributing NO discrepancies to anything done by others in areas where he - Tinubu - received fewer votes than you believe he deserved as acts of rigging. This uneven treatment of electoral outcomes raised some eyebrows.

As I have noted on numerous occasions, making claims is a straightforward matter, but for such claims to hold any semblance of truth or gain acceptance, they must be substantiated with evidence. Your essay suggests that "other independent" analysts, including yourself, possess evidence that is not accessible to Obi and Atiku (for potential legal use) or individuals like me, whom Dr. Kperogi, in a rather unkindly manner, referred to as "idiots" for challenging his assertions regarding Buhari's supposed demise.

I appreciate your optimism concerning Atiku's prospects, but I wonder where you position individuals like me, who rallied behind Tinubu in response to the "Lagos is a No Man's Land" rhetoric. Would we have cast our votes for Atiku or abstained altogether to boost Atiku's chances? Or we don't matter in your estimation of the outcome of any possible run-off election?

I also noticed that your 'objective analysis' seemed to disregard any of the issues raised by the justices of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. For instance, neither Obi nor Atiku could identify the specific polling booths, wards, local government councils, or states where they alleged election rigging occurred. What about the default function of both the BVAS and iREV machines and their alignment with the provisions of the Electoral Acts, as highlighted in the tribunal's judgment?

Regarding the disparities between the data loaded onto the iREV machines and the officially declared results, it appears that Obi and Atiku's legal teams were woefully ill-prepared to recognize the significance of these discrepancies when presenting their arguments. Alternatively, it's plausible that these irregularities were mere products of your collective imaginations and not grounded in reality.

Your discussion on the 'Absurdity of the Dual Citizenship Ruling' elicited a chuckle from me. I invite you to recall those video clips featuring the 'demented' deep-fake version of Tinubu that circulated before the election. If Nigerians or Tinubu's opponents could orchestrate such a fabrication, then surely the reproduction of a passport photocopy should not pose insurmountable challenges. To jog your memory, a secondary school graduate managed to deceive over 200 million Nigerians with her falsified JAMB result, a ruse that continued until she was confronted with metadata exposing her fraudulent claims. Many Igbo individuals, in the meantime, propagated a slew of unfounded allegations concerning ethnic, religious, and gender biases.

Sir, do you genuinely believe it's unreasonable for the justices to request from Atiku and Obi for Tinubu's original passport? Do not tell me that you did not know where the onus of proof lies. What prevented Atiku and Obi from pursuing another legal avenue to subpoena Tinubu's genuine Gambian or Japanese passport? Perhaps the Tribunal was subtly suggesting this.

On the flip side, what does the Nigerian Constitution stipulate regarding dual citizenship?

I am a baby historian and not a lawyer; however, I know that the Nigerian Constitution does not explicitly allow for dual citizenship. According to Section 28(1) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended), a person who is a Nigerian citizen by birth cannot become a citizen of another country simultaneously. It states:

"Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, a person shall forfeit his Nigerian citizenship if, not being a citizen of Nigeria by birth, he acquires or retains the citizenship or nationality of a country, other than Nigeria, of which he is not a citizen by birth."

This provision essentially means that if you are a Nigerian citizen by birth, you are not allowed to hold citizenship or nationality in another country without forfeiting your Nigerian citizenship. However, if you are a Nigerian citizen by birth and you wish to acquire the citizenship of another country, you would typically have to renounce your Nigerian citizenship to do so.

It's important to note that while the Nigerian Constitution does not permit dual citizenship for those who are Nigerian citizens by birth, some exceptions may apply for individuals who acquire Nigerian citizenship through naturalization or registration.

Does any of the above apply to honorary citizens?

When we don't have any evidence, claims are useless.


Over the years, I have read numerous articles on various platforms that have cemented my belief that one of Nigeria's chief problems lies in the miseducation of its elite. Your assertion that "the judges declared the N300 billion INEC 'spent' on the BVAS and I-REV infrastructure as a waste and an illegal expenditure with no utilitarian or legal value to the country" serves as a prime example of elite-led miseducation.

Instead of questioning "What do the judges make of the fact that, for the House of Reps and Senate elections held on the same day as the presidential one, real-time electronic transmission of results worked perfectly but either broke down or was sabotaged for the presidential election?" I believe it would be more prudent to furnish evidence to support such claims. After all, claims, no matter how vigorously presented, remain inconsequential in the absence of substantiated proof.

This persistent fixation on "nothing positive can come from Nigeria" tends to obscure our recognition of the positive developments, however modest they may be, occurring within the nation.

I conclude my response in a spirit of peace.

OBA

***************************************************************************************************

Bukola A. Oyeniyi

*****************************************************************************************************

Missouri State University

College of Humanities and Public Affairs

History Department

Room 440, Strong Hall,

901 S. National Avenue

Springfield, MO  65897

Email: oyen...@gmail.com

***********************************************************

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[Victor Okafor]

The one point you didn't include in your postulates is that Atiku's presidential quest was built on a foundation of illegality, given that his PDP party set the ball of illegitimacy rolling by breaking its  its own constitutional zoning formula, which set the South, and not the North, as the producer of a presidential candidate for the 2023 presidential election. So, Atiku was a flawed candidate from the get-go. Of the three major contestants, he most deserved to loose. 

Let it be known that my only major issue with the overall 2023 presidential election was and is that INEC broke the fragile hearts of democracy-loving Nigerians by reneging on its tantalizing commitment to have the election results directly and digitally transmitted from polling stations to INEC's server. It was a massive and historic breach of faith that tainted the announced/declared presidential election results. The video-recorded scenes of polling- booth malfeasance and election- results-tampering at certain collation centers inflicted psychological injuries upon the minds of a generation of youths whose patriotic ferver had been fired by INEC's broken promise to the country that "Nigerians would see their votes transmitted live on election day." (I stayed-up all night waiting in vain to see what would have marked a Nigerian breakthrough onto the family of democracies of this planet). But alas, the "Trouble with Nigeria" interjected its divide-and-rule ugly face that brought sorrow, rather than joy, to the faces of the long-suffering masses of Nigeria. In a normal polity where the rule of law prevails, INEC's chairman should be lawyering-up for trial in what should be rightly titled as "INEC Chairman vs the People of Nigeria." 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

A beautiful discussion 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

I'm struck by the variety of views on the election results transmission.

I would like to share some of  those that support the judges ruling in case anyone would like to respond to them.

Against the Ruling: 

A: The declaration of INEC to transmit live results is more of a social contract than a mere promise.

It became a contract when huge public monies were invested in the process.

It's contractual value is amplified by the modifications in the electoral act signed by the President enabling that method of transmission of election results.

The gravity of the contract escalates when considered in relation to the understanding of that method of transmission as a certain way to create electoral  transparency in a  country in which elections have often been suspect.

Breaking the contract becomes even more problematic since the transmission method was successfully used in the other elections but was compromised in the most important one.

My concern  is with the ruling that INEC is not bound to use the transmission method signed into law and agreed upon with the populace whose money was used in procuring the necessary technology to fulfill this social contract.

Looks like a dangerous style of thinking to me.

In Support of the Ruling 

B: There is nothing sacrosanct about the guidelines issued by INEC that they will transmit the results in a certain way.

What the Law says is that the results shall be transmitted.

And it was transmitted.

Guidelines, and even laws, are made for man,  not man for the law.

If the law or the INEC guidelines promises transmission by a particular mode, and a t the point of Transmission,  when the chips were down, INEC saw the subsisting situation as NOT BEING CONDUCIVE to using a particular mode of transmission,  then they have done nothing wrong whatsoever in doing what was expedient in the circumstance. 

INEC has explained repeatedly that there was GRAVE AND VERY REAL DANGER of hackers  destroying the whole result upload process at that point in time if the results are uploaded by the electronic means, and instantaneously as earlier announced.

What were they supposed to do, ?

To go back on TV to take permission for transmitting the results in the way they think is best in the circumstance?

To go and look for experts to forestall the hacking, which is not even sure to prevent the hackers from doing their evil job, for which they have been paid by election riggers?

To do nothing?

Or to ignore the danger of hacking, and still upload, because the guidelines say so?

 And thus hand over the results for our most important election since 1999 to hackers on a platter of gold, for them to do with it as they wish?

Nooo !

INEC did the absolutely right thing. They would be like drones, like robots  or zombies to have gone ahead to do what they knew would endanger the ENTIRE  process, just for the sake of keeping up with a tiny part of that whole process.

And, has it occurred to us that it was the earlier announcement of results transmission by electronic means that gave the enemies of Nigeria and the Electoral process, the heads-up, 

and allowed them to carefully plan and recruit international hackers, waiting  for the election results transmission process? So that they can truncate the process ?

INEC did the right thing in announcing that the results would be electronically transmitted. 

But  it also gave riggers the information that allowed them to plan to hack into the results uploading process, and thus destroy the credibility of the whole thing.

INEC did the right thing by sidestepping the trap , and ditching the electronic transmissions. 

APPLAUSE to INEC.👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾✊🏾

Talking of money wasted in acquiring the equipment is absolutely unnecessary. 

What amount of money is worth allowing a potential TRUNCATING of the whole election process?

INEC should be praised for NOT  Transmitting the results electronically. 

Meanwhile, none of the litigants is claiming that the results CERTIFIED by all parties at the PUs and collation centres is any different from the ones eventually manually transmitted. 

It is pettiness and smallness of spirit for them to be harping on instantaneous electronic transmission, when the slow, delayed manual transmission DID NOT ALTER the results certified at the PUs and collation centres.

C: There was no contract.

It was not stated in the electoral law that it would be a live transmission.

You are simply skewing the narrative to arrive at a preconceived notion.

There was a court ruling on this in Osun State.

Results of all elections in all the 170,000 plus units in the country were signed at the various units instantly after counting in the present of voters and agents who waited to count the results.

That gave birth to the chorus *Eluuupeee 74* etc 

The results of the various units in each ward in the local governments were collated by agents at a designated  accredited  locations in every local goverment.

The results of all the collated results in every local goverment were collated at the state level.

The results of the results collated at the states level were collated in Abuja

All these collations at various levels had the signatures of all the accredited party agents of the parties.

If there was at any time  discrepancies between the results in IREV and the hard copies signed by the party agents,it was very easy to  prove.

Did Labour Party or PDP point out one single discrepancy in the result collated at the state level and what was announced

?

NO.

Technology played it's part as,even durring collations,the chairman was rejecting many results that did not tally with what he had in the system.

Let's stop chasing smokeand shadows.

.

D:  Did you listen to the judgement?

It stated clearly that where INEC rule conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution prevails.

Who's the President that signed the modification? The incumbent or the previous President?

Law no be beans!

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[Moses Ochonu]

Victor,

I’m not sure you can describe Atiku’s nomination as illegal. His nomination did not violate the constitution or any other law.

Sure, his nomination upended the PDP’s previous informal agreement on the rotation/zoning of their presidential ticket and the presidency. That arrangement not only lacked legal backing; it was  exclusive to the PDP. I’m not even sure it’s in the PDP’s constitution.

But, as you’ll remember, the PDP set up a committee on the prompting of Wike and others to decide the zoning of the presidential ticket. The committee was headed by Benue Governor Ortom. The hope was that the committee would restate the party’s gentleman agreement and zoning arrangement and exclude Atiku and other northern candidates.

The committee returned, cowardly in my opinion, with a decision to “throw the contest open” to aspirants from all regions.

That opened the door officially to Atiku to become the nominee. Wike and other Southern aspirants didn’t like decision but trudged on, hoping that the PDP’s precedent on zoning and their money might prevail and defeat Atiku to render the departure from the internal zoning arrangement moot. It didn’t work, and that was the beginning of the PDP’s problems with the emergence of the G-5 with Wike as its leader.

Obi’s departure for the LP was a further blow.

I totally agree with everything else you wrote.

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 10, 2023, at 6:06 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Moses Ochonu]

Toyin Adepoju,

Here, below, is the opinion of Lawyer, Inebehe Effiong.

Also, INEC is on record in print and on tape as reiterating that it would transmit live result from polling units electronically to the central server. INEC issued this public assurance just weeks before the election in response to rumors that it was considering abandoning live electronic transmission of results.

Let’s not forget that INEC had lobbied for the inclusion of the live electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Act signed by Buhari and thereafter celebrated it as an electoral game changer.

From Inebehe Effiong:

“The law says that INEC shall prescribe the manner of transfer of results. INEC in obedience to the law prescribed in its Guidelines (the constitutional process by which INEC is allowed to implement its role) that it will do so electronically. 

There were rumors that INEC intended to abandon the manner of transfer it had prescribed. INEC came out publicly and strongly debunked it as false. The country went to vote based on this background.

There’s what is called the Doctrine of Legitimate Expectations in law. A public institution that makes assurances that it will act in a particular way, should be held accountable to act in that manner.

I have read the view of those who argue that INEC has a discretion. The questions they should answer are: 1. Did INEC exercise this discretion regarding the mode of transmission? If it did, what mode did INEC prescribe? 2. Did INEC at any time amend its Guidelines or even state by a public statement that it will no longer transmit results electronically? 

You cannot talk about discretion in the manner of transfer or transmission without first acknowledging that there’s a legal obligation to transfer results. 

More importantly, whatever mode is adopted by INEC, it has to be one that makes it possible to transmit DIRECTLY FROM POLLING UNITS.

Public funds was voted for this. INEC rested the integrity of the whole election on the use of BVAS for accreditation and transmission of results.

Yet, INEC has not been condemned or even criticized for violating its own Guidelines and promises. I don’t believe that this is how a country that wants to be taken seriously is supposed to act.“

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 10, 2023, at 6:06 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Ayoola Tokunbo]

Moses,

Are you saying only Wike and Southern candidates spent money at the PDP Primaries?

Atiku was the only saint at the venue who did not spend a diem.

Zoning is in the PDP constitution.

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: 10 September 2023 12:44

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks Moses.

My understanding is increased.

Toyin

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[Moses Ochonu]

Tokunbo,

I am not saying that at all. I am saying that, having lost the battle to exclude Atiku and other northern candidates, Wike thought his Rivers State war chest and the existing PDP principle of rotation would prevail and put him ahead of Atiku. 

Atiku spent his own money but also got serious financial infusion from his northern allies, which helped defeat Wike, who came a close second in the primary.

I take your word that zoning is in the PDP constitution, which I haven’t read. If so, the decision of the committee to “throw open” the contest for the ticket clearly went against the party’s constitution. 

But this is a PDP affair, not an issue of Nigerian law. That’s the overarching point I was making to Victor.

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 10, 2023, at 11:43 AM, Ayoola Tokunbo <toks_...@hotmail.com> wrote:



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