By Tayo Adigun
The perception that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) underperformed during the February 25 Presidential Poll is rather preposterous. To further allege INEC could not have delivered a credible exercise leading to the emergence of a validly elected president, on account of the misleading narrative of underperformance, appears mischievous and manifestly in bad faith. If anything, the Electoral Body should be commended for raising the bar of credible polls in Nigeria and indeed in the African Continent.
Considering the salient inferences of a paradigm shift in the electoral map that could be drawn from results across the country, the outcome of the presidential election only speaks to the fact that votes counted to the extent that the choice of the electorate largely prevailed. The performance of INEC on February 25 was undeniably top-notched and a huge plus for the credibility and validity of the outcome of the Poll.
It is rather unfortunate that improvements recorded with the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the re-delineation of polling units are being overlooked and unacknowledged on account of overdramatized emotion and disappointment by those whose expectations were at variances with the outcome of the poll.
There is the tendency to forget or rather pretend not to recognise that INEC’s responsibility stops at delivering a credible process and not to determine how the pendulum of the outcome of a poll swing. The outcome of any poll is determined by the collective wishes of the electorate as conveyed by the totality of their votes. It is on record that the February 25 Presidential Election was held against the backdrop of fierce expectations fired by religious and non-scientific predictions as well as seemingly plausible projections published by established as well as emergency pollsters within and across the country.
By way of introspection, therefore, it would be safe to conclude that attempts to discredit the outcome of the presidential poll are rooted in the heated events that heralded the exercise. It must be conceded that the curiosity and optimism elicited by the presidential election were feverish and almost combustive. Any ardent supporter of the three leading candidates could bet without blinking an eye that his or her choice was sure to emerge the winner.
It is indeed evident from the outcome of the poll that any of the three front runners actually stood a chance to win and that the final outcome could have gone either way. It was the first time since the restoration of civil dispensation; leading to over two decades of stable democracy that Nigeria would witness a three-horse race with the prospects of an outcome widely adjudged to be too close to call.
The electoral process in Nigeria has never witnessed the level of excitement and enervating passion invested in the 2023 pre-election season. Understandably, the presidential poll elicited huge momentum of engagement amongst contenders and supporters who turned social media platforms into a theatre of political battle. Social media shattered barriers and enhanced robust platforms which were exploited to the fullest by enthusiasts who lined up behind the gladiators of their choices.
The dimension of engagement on social media spaces was ramified and unsparing with spices of ethnoreligious connotation ahead of the presidential election. It is therefore not unexpected that the intensity of political engagements which precipitated emotions underlining huge expectations have refused to take the backseat weeks after the poll and declaration of the winner. The charge of underperformance against INEC should therefore be understood within the context of the emotive glamour to discredit the conduct of the poll and delegitimise the outcome.
The puzzle remains if the outcome of the poll would have been deemed credible or acceptable if any of the other two candidates who lost in the keenly contested exercise had turned out to be the winner announced by INEC. What begs for an answer in the perception of underperformance by INEC is the failure attributable to INEC beyond the rather unfortunate circumstances that negated the real-time upload of results declared at the polling units against popular expectations. Aside from the regrettable hitches occasioned by the failure to transmit results to the INEC portal from the BVAS machine, the process of the election, at least within the purview and control of INEC, was largely within the range of high performance.
The outcome delivered by a process that was within the threshold of a high mark of performance can only be valid and credible unless otherwise proven to the contrary. Curiously, those who consciously seek to discredit the outcome of the presidential election failed to reckon that circumstantial occurrence tends to make a fickle perception of underperformance against INEC and by extension the alleged lack of credibility and invalidity of the outcome.
It stands against reason and sense of truth that the two other polls for the Senate and House of Representatives seats that were conducted simultaneously with the presidential election have not been challenged or dismissed with so much disdain by those who insist that the outcome of the. presidential election be discarded on account of the alleged failure by INEC to deliver a free, fair, and credible poll.
It is imperative to draw the attention of promoters of negative narratives against the credibility of the February 25 presidential to the unique feature of the outcome as announced by INEC. Not only has it become evident that votes could actually count in Nigeria, the outcome of the 2023 presidential election clearly demonstrates, beyond doubt, that the choices of the electorate could be so manifestly displayed as against previous experiences where the winner would secure an overwhelming majority of unexplained votes.
It should be interesting that for the first time since the Second Republic, more Nigerians actually voted against the eventual winner. The outcome should apparently teach the opposition political parties some bitter lessons about organizing against the political party in power rather than encourage morbid disenchantment and needless mockery of the electoral process. Democracy as a process must be allowed to endure regardless of temporary disappointment and pains of defeat.
•Adigun, a political scientist, writes from Ado-Ekiti