Akanni Alaka
The last minute postponement of the presidential and National Assembly elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has thrown the camps of political parties in disarray.
Findings by The Nigerian Xpress showed that the political parties, especially the All Progressives Congress,APC, and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are confused as the postponement came out of the blue.
Strategists of the two major parties are now scratching their heads on the appropriate response to the unexpected development, according to findings by The Nigerian Xpress.
It was gathered that the parties are now frustrated and in panic mode with the resources already committed to the exercise.
A leading member of one of the parties said that with mobilisation already done, the election may be one of the costliest in the history of the country.
According to him, they had to demobilise their men, who were already out in the field, following the announcement of the postponement but now they have to look for resources to send the men back to the field within one week.
Adams Oshiomhole, the National Chairman of APC had at the stakeholders meeting held by INEC, following the shift in the dates of the election, lamented that the electoral umpire allowed the parties to deploy resources for the exercise before announcing that the polls would no longer hold.
“I think we should be honest; I am shocked, I am disappointed, I am disgusted,” Oshiomhole said.
“Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, tell us why by Wednesday you were not in a position, since you acknowledged that the weather was bad, you should have taken all of these into account and announced this postponement, at least, 48 hours before the due time so that political parties do not have to mobilise resources across 176,000 polling units,” he added.
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It was also learnt that the parties are suspicious of what the postponement could portend for the outcome of the polls.
Party officials are jittery as to what happens to the sensitive materials already sent out to the states, even down to the ward level.
The fear, according to our correspondents is whether such materials won’t get into wrong hands or cloned to perpetrate fraud. For instance, sources told The Nigerian Xpress that two white Hilux vehicles, with two black police vans were cited in Abia State, heading towards the INEC office, with presumably election materials before the postponement. “Such materials can easily get into the wrong hands and deployed to manipulate the process,” the source said.
Another source also told our correspondent that on the eve of the now postponed election, security report from Abuja indicated that some already thumb printed materials were being airlifted to either Abia or Rivers State. “We were on the lookout, but we didn’t see anything like that in our state (Abia). But, we quickly alerted our people in Rivers to be on the lookout,” a source said.
It was also a grave concern to some party officials that while INEC was meeting in Abuja, its state helmsmen were left in limbo, as most of them were not aware of what was going on. “Imagine the Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs, were doing their own, while INEC chairman was holding meeting in Abuja for possible postponement. That’s the disconnect that you have there,” another source said.
Back to the Drawing Board
In spite of the seeming confusion, we gathered that party officials have since the weekend returned to their drawing boards to take advantage of the additional days made available to them by the postponement to perfect their strategies of winning the election.
The main opposition PDP had some hours after the announcement of the postponement, summoned the meeting of its leaders, most of who had travelled to various parts of the country to vote the previous day to an urgent meeting.
The strategies, as this newspaper learnt last Saturday, are also being mostly influenced by the reasons – real or speculated – that the parties believe are responsible for the shift in the date of the poll.
Why We Rescheduled the Elections
Professor Mahmood Yakub, Chairman of INEC, had after over six hours meeting with his commissioners announced the shift in date for the presidential and National Assembly elections earlier scheduled for February 16 to February 23, citing operational and logistic reasons.
He also announced the postponement of the governorship, House of Assembly and FCT area council elections from March 2 to March 9 for the same reasons. He further explained the logistic and operational problems that led to the postponement at a press conference on Saturday afternoon.
While addressing critical stakeholders last Saturday afternoon, Mahmood attributed the postponement to the challenges posed by the tremendous national mobilisation of men and materials required for the conduct of the elections as well as the delays in delivering ballot papers and result sheets for the elections.
He noted that this was in spite of the fact that all the ballot papers and result sheets needed for the election were ready.
He also listed the over 640 court cases, arising from the nomination of candidates, bad weather which prevented the use of planes to deliver sensitive materials, as well as attempts to sabotage the commission’s efforts.
According to the INEC boss, the commission had to deal with serious fire incidents in its offices in Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area of Abia State, Qu‘an Pan Local Government Area of Plateau State and the Anambra State Office at Awka in the three weeks preceding the election. The fire incidents further diverted the attention of the commission from its preparation for the election, he added, noting that the most serious was at INEC office in Awka where over 4,600 Smart Card Readers being prepared for the elections were burnt.
“These Card Readers take, at least, six months to procure. Despite this setback, we have practically recovered from this by mopping up every available spare SCR across the country and within 24 hours delivered them for elections to hold in Anambra State,” Professor Yakubu said.
“All these challenges mean that there have been differences in preparations from one state to another. Our overall assessment is that if the elections went on as planned, polls will not open at 8am in all polling units nationwide. Yet, we are determined that polls must hold at the same time everywhere in the country. In this way, elections will not be staggered. This is very important to the public perception of elections as free, fair and credible. We promised Nigerians that we shall be open, transparent and responsive,” he added.
He noted that INEC could not shift the election to Sunday, February 17 so that the restriction of movement during elections will not stop people from going to churches.
Professor Yakubu also noted that shifting the election to Monday, February 18, was ruled out because the ICT Department of the commission advised that it would require 5-6 days to reconfigure about 180,000 Smart Card Readers earlier programmed to work only on 16th of February.
“It is for this reason that the commission decided to adjust the election dates to Saturday 23rd of February 2019 for Presidential and National Assembly elections and a consequential adjustment of Governorship, State Assembly and FCT Area Council elections to Saturday 9th of March 2019,” he said.
Conspiracy Theories
Despite the explanations, conspiracy theories have persisted, especially among the two leading parties, on the reasons for the shift in the date for the polls.
Both parties and their candidates had in statements released immediately after the postponement accused each other of engineering the shift in the date of the polls, with the aim of gaining advantage or making up for identified areas of weaknesses.
The Presidential Campaign Council of APC had in a statement signed by Mr. Festus Keyamo, its Director, Strategic Communications, alleged that the commission may be working with the PDP to sabotage the polls to its advantage.
He cited the fact that some popular social media influencers aligned to the political party had indicated that there would be postponement of the election early on Friday.
“We do hope that INEC will remain neutral and impartial in this process. We have earlier raised alarm that the PDP is bent on discrediting this process the moment it realised it cannot make up the numbers to win this election. We are only urging INEC not to collude with the PDP on this,” Keyamo said.
Speaking in the same vein, the presidential candidate of the PDP alleged that the APC-led government engineered the shift of the elections to stop Nigerians from using their voter cards to drive President Buhari out of office.
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“This postponement is obviously a case of the hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob. By instigating this postponement, the Buhari administration hopes to disenfranchise the Nigerian electorate in order to ensure that turn out is low on the rescheduled date,” Atiku, a former vice president and PDP presidential candidate, said in a statement released hours after the announcement of the postponement.
In a similar statement by its chairman, Uche Secondus, PDP described the postponement as part of a “grand design by the APC to thwart the will of Nigerians at all cost,” which he said had clearly exposed the INEC as a failure.
Secondus asked the Chairman of INEC to resign immediately over the postponement and recalled that the PDP had earlier alerted Nigerians that the APC had devised rigging strategies, including burning down of INEC offices and engineering crisis in PDP strongholds to scare away the people.
“With several of their rigging options failing, they have to force INEC to agree to a shift in the election or a staggered election with flimsy excuses pre-manufactured for the purpose. For the avoidance of doubt the PDP sees this action, as wicked and we are also aware of other dubious designs like the deployment of hooded security operatives, who would be ruthless on the people ostensibly to scare them away,” Secondus said.
The PDP chairman cited the killing of over 60 persons mostly women and children in Southern Kaduna on the eve of election, as a copious ploy by the APC to scare the people from voting, knowing too well that they were not going to record any vote from the area.
Deliberate Sabotage
In addition, PDP members are also arguing that some of the key reasons cited by Prof Yakub for the postponement like the burning of INEC offices, card readers as well as inability and mix-up in the distribution of sensitive election materials across the country were state-induced sabotage aimed at helping the ruling party to retain office.
Indeed, the Niger State Resident Electoral Commissioner had just before the news that the management of the electoral commission were meeting in Abuja to consider the possibility of the postponement of the election, hit the airwaves on Friday to raise the alarm that ballot papers for the National Assembly elections for two senatorial districts in his state were missing.
The Oyo State Resident Commissioner, Mutiu Agboke, confirmed in a radio interview last Saturday that the Central Bank of Nigeria messed up the distribution of the sensitive election materials for INEC by sending the presidential ballot papers meant for Bauchi State to his own state. “That of Oyo is in Niger, Edo material is in Delta. Another consignment meant for Oyo State is in Lagos State as at 7pm yesterday (last Friday) and it came to Oyo State at 1am today (Saturday). There is no way we can distribute it to all the local governments and it will get to the polling units on time. Imagine the situation and tension that will arise because materials have not gotten to the polling units by 11am? At this point, it dawned on us that we have to exercise some caution,” he said.
Apart from Oyo, The Nigerian Xpress gathered that the distribution of sensitive voting materials, especially ballot papers and collation sheets were yet to take off in Edo, Taraba, Jigawa, Nasarawa, among others late into the night of last Friday.
The PDP said the mismanagement of the distribution of sensitive materials was done to ensure that INEC was unable to conduct elections all across the country at the same time, following survey which indicated that the ruling party would be voted out if the polls had gone ahead. As argued by the opposition party, the ultimate aim was to ensure that elections were not held in, at least, 10 states considered critical to the victory of its presidential candidates. This, they argued would give room for holding ‘staggered elections’ which the ruling party will rig to its advantage with the use of security operatives.
Osita Chidoka, one of the spokespersons of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation said at the meeting organised for stakeholders by INEC last Saturday that the party had in its possession the list of 10 states being targeted for staggered election.
Some PDP members also cited the letter written to INEC by the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, early last asking INEC to shift the election to enable it to include candidates of APC in Zamfara State on the ballot as further evidence that the electoral commission may have carried out the shift in election date due to pressure from the ruling party.
Alluding to such fears, the Civil Society Situation Room, a group of NGOs, working in support of credible and transparent elections in Nigeria, had in its reaction to INEC postponement warned the Commission that any of its “assessment or decision, regarding the polls or challenges with materials must be made with respect to the whole country and not in any way focused on some parts of the country.”
The Situation Room in a statement signed by its convener, Clement Nwankwo, added, “Any suggestion that the election be held in a staggered manner will be totally unacceptable, and would be a recipe for a disastrous election. INEC owes it to Nigerians to provide clear explanation on why we are having conversations about deployment of materials in this late hour. The credibility of election depends not just on the efficiency of INEC to manage its processes but also on its ability to communicate honestly with the stakeholders.”
But APC has denied having any hand in the postponement of the election. The ruling party cited the disqualification of its candidates in Zamfara and Rivers as evidence that the electoral commission could not have been working in its favour.
On the other hand, APC had also accused INEC of doing the bidding of the opposition party by giving into to the demands of PDP, citing the redeployment of one of the commissioners of the commission from a key position in the collation centre, as a result of the pressure from the opposition party. Such accusations, counter accusations and suspicions between the two parties will continue till next Saturday.
What Next for APC, PDP?
The parties will not be able to return to the campaign grounds or take to the media to woo Nigerians despite the postponement, according to INEC. Prof Yakubu said this at his last Saturday’s press briefing in response to questions from OsitaChidoka, a representative of the PDP at the event that the campaign period has closed.
Osita had asked INEC to allow campaigns continue to enable the parties and candidates to continue mobilisation of voters up until the 24 hours before election stipulated in the constitution. But The Nigerian Xpress gathered that the party will continue with their mobilisation using the social media and personal contacts at the grassroots level across the country.
This, a source told this newspaper last week, was necessary to ensure that people did not lose interest in the process, a situation, which may lead to low turnout of voters at the polls. PDP chieftains are considering the different options of achieving this as they believed that a huge turnout is necessary for the victory of their presidential candidate, it was gathered.
Even at that, the party had also indicated that it would continue to monitor the sensitive election materials already distributed before the postponement of the election to keep them away from being used to rig the polls by the ruling party. INEC Chairman had assured that the sensitive materials will be retrieved and kept under close watch across the country, but the parties are not ready to take his word for it.
Chief Davies Ikanya, a former chairman of APC in Rivers State said in an interview that though political parties have spent hugely on logistics, some Nigerians have also spent hugely by traveling to their various polling centres, the postponement will give his party more opportunity to mobilise for votes. “I look forward to even a higher response and turnout on Feb. 23 by our supporters,” he said.
Also, members of Zamfara chapter of APC said the postponement of the election will their party more time to pile pressure on INEC to include their candidates on the ballot.
“We were told that our party leaders had already submitted the list of APC candidates from this state, we also heard that the Attorney General of the Federation had written to INEC to accept the list of Zamfara APC candidates. So, up to yesterday night, we have not heard INEC’s response in this regard, we are hoping that between today and Friday next week we will hear good news about our candidates,” Alhaji Bello Maliki, a member of the party was quoted as saying in an interview over the weekend. But it was also gathered that any move in this regard by INEC will be met by strident opposition from PDP.
Nigerians should also be ready for the scale up of the propaganda war, as both parties subject actions and inactions of each other as well as those of INEC to close scrutiny in the days ahead.