By NICK DAZANG
THE moment Nigerians and members
of the international community has been waiting, with bated breath, it has arrived: the action of the 2023 general election. The moment represents the seventh election cycle since the democratic Nigeria in 1999. The 2023 general election includes the presidential election; gubernatorial elections in 28 states of the Federation, and 1,462 legislative elections representing 109 Senate seats, 360 House of Representatives seats; and 993 State Council seats. About 93,469,008 Nigerians are registered to vote in the election. Elections will come in due time. He caught up when the country was at its nadir or remained behind in almost every department. No fewer than 130 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty. Inflation has shot through the stratosphere. Insecurity bestrides the land like some grotesque colossus. And in the latest ranking of universities on the African continent by WEBOMETRICS, none of the best in Nigeria is in the first 15!
In the wee hours of Saturday, February 25, 2023, no less than 1.4 million electoral staff of the commission will count from 8,809 villages/registration area centers, to 176,846 voting units, PUs, throughout the country. They will consist of returning officers, assistant returning officers, monitoring officers, presiding officers, assistant presiding officers, and security agents who will camp overnight at the center, some of whom are called “SuperRacs” (RAC groups). It was one of the largest deployments of men and materials in peacetime. The massiveness of this operation is due to the fact that the number assigned is more than what would have been used to conduct elections in all the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, except Nigeria. It was like Operation Overlord, the historic Battle of Normandy, which the War Correspondent, Cornelius Ryan, recounted in The Longest Day. On June 6, 1944, 1,600,000 Allied troops under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower crossed the English Channel and invaded France, which was then occupied by Germany.
After setting up the PU between 8.00 and 8.30 and attaching the relevant election information such as the list of registered voters, the committee chairman will explain the accreditation and election procedures to all present. He will declare the PU open for accreditation and voting. Voters must show their permanent voter card, PVC. After that, the voter will be verified and authenticated, using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, device. Verified and confirmed voters must be accredited and issued with a ballot paper. He proceeded to the cubicle, without any recording device or Android phone. They show the candidate/party they chose secretly. He folded the ballot paper and proceeded to insert it into the appropriate box under the glare of voters, party agents, observers, journalists, INEC monitors, and poll officials.
After voting, voters can choose to remain, as long as they do so peacefully and do not disrupt the process. After every voter in line has voted, the chairman of the committee must declare the voting closed. Ballots will be sorted by poll officials according to party or competing candidates. They will then be counted with the spotlight of voters and party agents. The result should be entered in the result sheet, Form EC8A and Form 60E. Each result sheet, the original copy of which will be signed by the polling officer and party agent, will be given to each agent and security agent, usually the police, which is the main security agency, for records. The EC8A form will be scanned using the BVAS device. Accredited voter rolls will also be scanned. Both will be sent electronically to the Commission. Form 60E, known as the poster form due to its size, will be pasted on the PU for all to see. The EC8A form and list of accredited voters will be re-uploaded on the INEC Results Viewing Portal, IReV. Interested Nigerians can log on to this portal and see, in real time, the election results in every PU across the country. By combining all these results, one can determine the number of votes scored by each candidate.
In addition to electronic transmission in the PU, results will go through strict manual collection at ward, local government, and state levels (for presidential elections). The important thing is that all candidates will be represented by their agents until the presidential election stage. The idea is to maintain a paper trail and ensure that all the results collected (at various stages) have fidelity to the sender. The fact that the results are transmitted and collected under the spotlight of eagle-eyed agents, observers, and journalists lends integrity and transparency to the process. This vigilance also makes it impossible to manipulate the process or change the results strangely. At the level of the Commission, the conduct of the elections will be monitored through the Situation Room and the Collection Center. Apart from the army deployed to conduct the elections, thousands of observers will be deployed at the ward, local government, and state levels. The task of the supervisor is to report and escalate, in a timely manner, any unexpected incident to the Situation Room for faster and immediate treatment. Supervisors are also supervisors. And in his capacity as a monitor, he can intervene and correct the process if there are any shortcomings or challenges. In addition to supervisors, there are no less than 1,000 Registration Area Technical Support Staff, RATECHS, whose job it is to solve any problems that may arise when using BVAS devices.
On election day, the situation room and collection center are commanded by the INEC chairman, who is assisted by national commissioners, directors, and technical staff. Reports from the field are received and attended through the Commission’s Election Monitoring and Support Center, EMSC; Election Operations Support Centre, EOSC; and INEC Citizen Contact Centre, ICCC. The Commission’s social media handles (Website: www.inecnigeria.org; Twitter: @inecnigeria; Facebook: www.facebook.com/inecnigeria) and phone lines (070-CALL-INEC; 0700-2255-4632, etc) are open to Nigerians submit complaints, which are then responded to in real time by a team of dedicated and ICT-savvy staff. Nigerians should note that for the presidential election, the Chairman of INEC, by law, is a returning officer because of his position as the Chairman of the Electoral Commission of the Federation. In this capacity, he will be assisted by a number of National Commissioners and other technical staff who enter the results as they are forwarded and presented from the states by their respective Returning Officers.
Other election results will be returned by INEC officials in their respective constituencies.
It should be noted that the candidate to be announced as the winner, he must meet two important criteria: He must win with the most votes in the election. In addition, he must win at least 25 percent, or a quarter, of the votes in not less than two-thirds of the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital, Abuja.
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*Dazang, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja via: [email protected]