Hours after, Nigerians, international community quiet on Tinubu’s emergence as President-elect

Most parts of the country have remained in quiet apprehension several hours since the declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of the Presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as President-elect.

INEC, at about 4am, early Wednesday morning, declared Asiwaju Tinubu as winner of the February 25 Presidential election conducted across the country by 18 political parties.

Announcing the final result of the poll inside the International Conference Centre, venue of the National Collation Centre, INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said Tinubu polled the highest number of votes across the country.

A total of 18 presidential candidates contested the election held across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, on Saturday.

The election was postponed till Sunday in some polling units in different states due to violence, logistical problems, theft of BVAS and other issues.

After collation at state INEC collation centres, the election results were presented by State Collation Officers for the Presidential election (SCOPs) before the INEC chairman at the National Collation Centre.

Mahmood announced that Tinubu won the election with the majority of votes cast in 36 states of Nigeria and the FCT.

The APC candidate polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat fellow contenders – Atiku Abubakar of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who polled 6,984,520 votes, Labour Party’s Peter Obi had 6,101,533 votes to come third and candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) Rabiu Kwankwaso with 1,496,687 votes.

Of the 36 states and FCT, Tinubu, Obi, and Atiku won 12 states each while Kwankwaso won only Kano State.

The 12 states won by Tinubu include; Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Benue, Rivers, Borno, Zamfara, Jigawa, Ondo, Kogi and Niger State.

Atiku of the PDP won Taraba, Osun, Akwa Ibom, Adamawa, Kaduna, Sokoto, Yobe, Bayelsa, Kebbi, Bauchi, Gombe and Katsina.

LP’s Obi won the following states; Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Anambra, Abia, Delta, Edo, FCT, Plateau, Nasarawa, Lagos and Cross River.

Going by the total states captured in the presidential elections, the APC won in 12 states, the main opposition PDP secured ]an equal number of 12 states, while the LP won in 11 states, in addition to the FCT (12).

However, the declaration by INEC of the winner most parts of the country has remained quiet, even as the international community is yet to react to the results of the political exercise.

This comes on the back of protests against the February exercise, and the conduct of the INEC in the polls from some sections of the country including former Heads of State, the opposition political parties, international election observer groups, who have alleged irregularities, in the conduct of the exercise.

A joint press briefing addressed by Vice Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Sen. Ifeanyi Okowa and his counterpart in the Labour Party, Dr. Yusuf Ahmed Baba-Ahmed, Tuesday, dismissed the Presidential election ‘as a sham.’

“So, procedurally, INEC cannot continue to announce results that are yet to be transmitted as expressly stated in the relevant Sections of the Electoral Act.

“The law is that where the law has set out the procedures to be followed, that procedures and no other must be followed.

“The argument that INEC guidelines have no force of law is idle and wayward arguments.

“This is not even the question of alterations of the results. It is a question of non-compliance with mandatory statutory provisions.

“The argument that it is only when the Chief Electoral Officer of the Federation announces the winner of the Presidential election that the results can be uploaded on the INE C portal cannot be correct.

“There must be uploading of results at the polling units after the polling officers had announced the winner at the polling units.

“Finally, we call on the commission to thread on the path of honor by canceling the election outright and commence the process of a fresh election that will not only be credible but will be seen to be credible by Nigerians.“

Labour Party had similarly reacted to the elections through its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.

“INEC by its conduct, has caused millions of Nigerians, particularly the teeming youth, who took part in this election with high hopes of a free and fair transparent process to hold strong feelings of disappointment and disillusionment. The Electoral Act was amended in 2022 for the electronic transmission of results after they are declared at the polling units.

“Nigerians participated in this process with the belief that the use of technology and adherence to the agreed electronic transmission of results to INEC servers at polling units would ensure free, fair, and transparent election.

“Traditionally, Nigerians know that previous elections witnessed manipulations of results by desperate politicians at collation centres and polling units.

“But, yesterday, Saturday, February 25, 2023, the very process which INEC assured Nigerians would be followed was truncated for whatever reasons. No matter what those reasons are, they are totally unacceptable to Nigerians and members of our party.

“INEC servers shut down, and ONLY PRESIDENTIAL elections could not be uploaded onto the INEC server. The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) did not work as planned.

“This failure has undoubtedly given room for manipulating the presidential results being announced by the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu at the Collation Centre in Abuja.

“We have sufficient documentary evidence that confirms that manipulations of the presidential election results have occurred in Lagos State, Rivers State, Imo State, parts of Edo State, Delta State, and some Northern states

“These manipulations were carried out under the watchful eyes and connivance of police officers at the various polling units and INEC offices.

“The decision of INEC to go ahead to announce these doctored results based on manufactured voting has defeated the efforts made by Nigerians to see that the Electoral Act was amended to allow for electronic transmission of results,” National Chairman of the LP, Julius Abure, reading the text by the party’s Presidential candidate, Obi at a press briefing Tuesday in Abuja.

Before then, former Heads of State of the country, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (rtd) had asked INEC to retrace its steps by following due process in post-election conduct as well as addressing grievances by political parties alleging electoral malpractices in the February 25 exercise.

General Abubakar (rtd) had, Tuesday, urged INEC to address the questions raised over the conduct of the elections and result collation by the commission following earlier calls by Chief Obasanjo, who had in an open letter, Monday, asked electoral umpire to invalidate election results from voters without the commission’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in order to avoid citizens’ pent-up anger and frustration, which he warned could ‘burst forth in negative reactions.’

Backing Obasanjo on the proper conduct of the post-election processes, Abubakar (rtd), in a personally signed statement for NPC, Tuesday, advised INEC to ‘take all the time it required to ensure that it delivered results that would inspire the confidence of the people and meet time tested international standards.’

The NPC which equally faulted the manual transmission of election results by INEC as against the electronic transmission which is enshrined in the Electoral Act amendment, asked INEC to take note of the allegations of misconduct trailing the presidential election.

In a statement, Tuesday, the committee headed by General Abubakar, however, urged Nigerians to remain calm while the issues were being sorted out.

The statement, titled, “A Call for Calm: Please Give Peace and the Process a Chance,” the National Peace Committee also urged the security agencies to cooperate with INEC in their investigations of these weighty allegations.

“We appeal to INEC to heed the grievances being expressed, to take the necessary steps to escalate investigations of all allegations of infractions and to ensure that justice is clearly done to all citizens who went out to vote.

“We have received reports of the culture of voter suppression manifested across the country through the application of targeted violence, disruption of processes, inducement of voters, intimidation, deliberate frustrations of voters and the challenges of the election equipment.

“We are pleased that INEC has accepted these lapses and promised to rectify these lapses. We appeal to the security agencies to collaborate with INEC in their investigations of these weighty allegations. Concerns about the failures of the INEC Result Viewing Portals (IReV) across the country must be thoroughly investigated to ensure transparency,” the ex-Head of State said.

Similarly, international election observers, including the ECOWAS delegation, European Union (EU) group, as well as the African Union (AU) and the Commonwealth Election Observer Group, were unanimous on their position on the Nigerian polls, as they scored INEC low on conduct.

The Commonwealth Election Observer Group in Nigeria had, Tuesday, urged aggrieved persons challenging the results of the just-concluded voting in the country’s Presidential and National Assembly elections to be patient, and observe restraint.

The Group further advised the aggrieved parties to direct their grievances ‘through prescribed legal channels,’ while awaiting the final results to be released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The Group said this while acknowledging the barrage of complaints against both the results of the elections so far released, as well as the conduct of the INEC officials in handling logistics issues during the polls.

“We call on all those with grievances to address disputes through prescribed legal channels… The time now is for restraint and continued patience as we await the final results,” head of the Commonwealth Observer Group in Nigeria, Thabo Mbeki stated, while acknowledging ‘the commitment shown by voters, despite the late arrival of election officials and materials at many polling units, technical issues with biometric identification machines in some cases, and delays with the live results transmission system.’

The group further noted ‘some inconsistencies in procedures, particularly in the positioning of some polling booths which compromised the secrecy of the ballot, as well as, lack of advance voting for those deployed on election day.’

“As voting hours extended into the night due to late openings, some polling units were ill-equipped with proper lighting to facilitate voting and counting in the dark,” Mbeki said.

The chairperson while also noting the low percentage of women candidates, said it was however ‘impressed by the vibrant participation’ of young people, including as polling officials, in the elections.

The Commonwealth observers were in Benue, Edo, Kano, Lagos, Ondo, Rivers and Sokoto states as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to observe the accreditation, voting, counting and results aggregation, and met with electoral officials and observers to build up a broader picture on the conduct of the electoral process.

The EU, AU, ECOWAS Observer groups were even more scathing in their ‘preliminary reports on the conduct of the polls with poor scorecard for INEC.

The African Union (AU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Observation Missions in Nigeria called on INEC to review the system of uploading results in real-time by ensuring the quick upload of election results on its portal among others.

The leader of the AU delegation and former President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, and the leader of the ECOWAS delegation and former President of Sierra Leone, Ernest Koroma, stated this when they briefed the media on the preliminary report of the elections in Abuja.

“All we can do at this stage as we have done in the preliminary report is to urge INEC, to where possible, improve on communication with the public and members of political parties.

“Improve on the counting and collation methods and review the uploading, because these were all systems that INEC promised to rule out without any difficulties.

“And as observers, we cannot make conclusive statements but will continue to urge INEC because there is a lot of anxiety out there, people are anxiously waiting.

“And the more we delay, the more we give room to speculations, misinformation, and disinformation.

“We will continue our engagements with INEC and other stakeholders to ensure that what has started as a relatively peaceful process will continue and end up in a manner that is acceptable to every one of us, including the Nigerian populace,” Koroma said, Tuesday.

However, across the country, apart from small clusters of jubilant Nigerians expectedly celebrating the victory of their candidates, the atmosphere was generally subdued, Thursday, as Nigerians grieved over missed opportunities which they claimed did not justify the opinion of the electorate in the just-announced results of the presidential polls.

“Nigeria is like a graveyard. You can hear a pin drop right now. I don’t really know the cause but I’m sure it’s unconnected with the results of the elections announced by INEC, this morning. It’s almost as if there is a public holiday in the (Lagos) state. This one sef shock me (sic),” responded Mike, an artisan at the Computer Villager, in Ikeja, Lagos.

Meanwhile, apart from congratulatory messages pouring in from within the country, the international community and foreign missions have remained silent on the outcome of the Nigeria polls, hours after the results were announced and overall winner decalred in the APC candidate, Tinubu.

It would be recalled that international polls conducted by foreign media ahead of the Nigerian elections, including the Bloomberg Polls, had returned the candidate of the Labour Party (LP) as clear favourite, with Tinubu coming in distant second in all.