Category: Niyi Akinnaso

Donald J. Trump and Peter Gregory Obi. The comparisons of aspects of their political behaviour are too close to ignore. They are both supposed billionaires turned politician. They both won elections before, Trump as President of the United States and Obi as Governor of Anambra state, Nigeria. They both lost the election to be President of their respective countries. Trump lost reelection in 2020, while Obi lost in his first attempt in 2023. They both denied the election they lost and encouraged their supporters to protest the results, while they continue to attack electoral officials and to denigrate the winner of the election.

The similarities in the campaigns for their failed presidential bid are worth detailed examination. To varying degrees, they both relied on ethnic and religious bigotry. True, there are no primordial ethic groups in the US as in Nigeria, but there are ethnisised populations in the country. They include Native American Indians (the original, but displaced, owners of the land), Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews. Some of these populations, especially Blacks, are racialised more than others. Opposed to these “ethnics” are Whites—nationalists and patriots in Trump’s terminology. Against that terminology, Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, actually translates to Make America White Again.

As for Obi and his ethnic followers, there are basically two ethnic groups in Nigeria—the Igbo and others. He took his campaign to the Igbo wherever they are located in Nigeria and even in the Diaspora. Majority of Igbo voters responded with their votes for him so much so that no other candidate had meaningful votes in the five Igbo states in the Southeast. He also mopped up Igbo votes elsewhere. IPOB and so-called Unknown Gunmen in the Southeast went into voluntary ceasefire to pave way for Obi’s unrealised victory.

Trump and Obi also both used religion as a campaign weapon. Trump, who rarely goes to church, would visit churches during campaign tours and boast of his popularity with “the evangelicals”. His transactional use of religion could be illustrated by two separate events. On one occasion, during the riots following George Floyd’s police killing, Trump stood by Saint John Episcopal Church beside the White House, with a closed Bible in his right hand, for a photo-op, while protesters were being tear-gassed in front of the White House. His attempt to further demonstrate his religiosity the following day, by posing in front of the statue of Pope John Paul II in Washington, drew even more criticisms. Politicians and even church leaders lambasted him for his transactional use of religion.

Obi’s transactional use of religion is much worse than Trump’s. Just as he targeted Igbo populations across the country, so did he target religious leaders, moving his campaign from church to church. Sunday sermons in many churches, especially in his Southeastern base, became political sermons and tutorials on how to vote “wisely”. In no time, his Labour Party logo of Papa, Mama, and Pikin was quickly reinterpreted in terms of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Translation: A vote for Obi is a vote for the Lord. It is no wonder then that Obi told Bishop Oyedepo in a leaked audio conversation between the two that the election “is a religious war”. The Bishop responded, “I believe that, I believe that, I believe that”, and assured Obi that “the result will be favourable”. Obi almost offered a quid pro quo during the conversation: “Like I keep saying, if this works, you people will never regret the support”.

Another shared feature between Trump and Obi is the use of social media by their supporters for disinformation, misinformation, defamation, and even slander. While Trump’s supporters are famous for conspiracy theories, Obi’s are famous for fake news and trolls.

By the time the election was held, it was clear that Trump and Obi had developed into some cultish figure for their followers. Relying on these followers, religious blessings, and inaccurate opinion poll results, both men became so psychologically invested in the success of their campaigns that they did not even imagine that they could lose.

Yet, both men lost squarely. Trump had 74.2 million popular votes, whereas Biden had 81.2 million. What is more, Trump did not meet the constitutional requirement of 270 electoral college votes to be elected President. Instead, he had only 232 electoral college votes, while Biden had 306.

Obi’s case is even worse. While Trump was the runner-up in the US election, Obi came third with 6.1 million votes in the Nigerian presidential election. Even the person who came second, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, with 6.9 votes said publicly that Obi could never have won. Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, had 8.7 million votes. Even more importantly, both Atiku and Obi fell short of the constitutional requirement of winning at least 25 percent of the votes in 24 or more states. Both Atiku (21 states) and Obi (17 states) fell short of the requirement, whereas Tinubu, who won, met the requirement in as many as 30 states.

Trump’s and Obi’s denials of the election could only arm their supporters to spew conspiracy theories and misinformation about the election on social media and on TV as well as engage in disruptive behaviour. While Trump’s supporters went as far as attacking the Capitol, which houses Congress, in order to prevent the certification of Biden’s winning result, Obi’s supporters are protesting all over the place and vowing to disrupt Tinubu’s inauguration as Nigeria’s President on May 29, 2023. Instead of inauguration, they advocate an Interim National Government, which is unknown to law.

What makes the political behaviour of these two men most objectionable is that they both have availed themselves of the constitutional means of seeking redress. Trump filed over 60 lawsuits to challenge one aspect or the other of the 2020 US presidential election and lost all of them. Obi’s petition is already with the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. If he is so confident of his evidence, why not wait for the verdict?

By continuing to deny the election and inciting his followers, even after filing his petition, Obi appears to be playing Trump. The last man who did that was Jair Bolsonaro, the former President of Brazil, who lost his reelection bid in 2022 to the present President, Luiz Lula da Silva.

Angered by the loss, and incited by Bolsonaro’s speeches, his supporters attacked the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the Presidential Palace. Like many of Trump’s rioters, many of Bolsonaro’s rioters are now languishing in jail. Bolsonaro earned the nickname of Trump of the Tropics. Obi may well be Trump of Africa.

Had Peter Obi of the Labour Party heeded the repeated warnings early in his campaign about the lack of structure, that is, grassroots organisations in all states-possibly in the 774 Local Government Areas in the country-his party would have been able to establish some foothold in a number of states over the past weekend, by winning a number of governorship races, at least in the states he won during the presidential election.

That, however, was not to be, because Obi’s conception of structure relied on a tripod of ethnic support, riding on Igbo version of awa lo kan (it is our turn); the youths, whom he deceived with alluring campaign slogans, such as “taking back our country” and transforming it “from consumption to production”, leading the youths to take him as a messiah; and the churches, riding on assumed backlash of the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress, featuring Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Kashim Shettima, who eventually won the presidential election.

Of course, there were other factors that fueled Obi’s campaign and gave him the illusion of possible victory. One, he got the support of usual suspects in the Southwest (who hardly toe the same line as the majority of their people), namely, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Chief Ayo Adebanjo. Two, sociocultural organizations in the South supported the LP candidate on the argument that an Igbo person should be president, as if such a person wouldn’t need sufficient votes across the country. Three, a number of jaundiced opinion polls projected Obi as winner. When these polls were referred to me for comments, I made three quick observations that, unlike US polls, the Nigerian polls projecting Obi were based on non-existent databases, inadequate sampling, and faulty methodology. Besides, a number of them provided only findings without data.

Unfortunately, Obi is still riding on the illusion of victory, even after it was clear he lost the election in which he came third and after the first runner-up, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, frankly stated that Obi could never have won the election. To Obi’s credit, however, he once made the rare admission that he was not challenging the outcome of the election but only the process, whatever he meant by that.

But his protégé in Lagos, Gbadebo Rhodes-FiveFour (oh, -Vivour, but allegedly not from the famous Rhodes family of Lagos), is not only challenging the process; he, too, is claiming he should have won the election in which he came a distant second, scoring 312,329, whereas Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the APC scored 762,134, which is more than double the LP vote. Moreover, Sanwo-Olu won every local government in the state, except Amuwo-Odofin, where the LP candidate was welcomed with an Igbo song during the campaign. On that occasion, a lady popped her head into the camera to tell viewers that their governor had arrived. Perhaps that event served as his own version of opinion poll, predicting his victory like that of the LP presidential candidate.

Undoubtedly, Obi’s victory in Lagos, in which he beat the presidential candidate of the APC in his home state, gave the LP governorship candidate the hope of winning the state. However, lack of political experience on the candidate’s part and the absence of a strong political structure in the state remained a major drawback. His supporters went to overdrive on their way to a victory they still had not earned. The candidate’s ethnic group, or is it his mother’s?, threatened to take over Lagos. They wanted to own it, since, as they claimed, it was a “No Man’s Land”. What audacity? It woke up the owners of the land and other right-thinking residents of the State of Excellence to rise up to Sanwo-Olu’s defense. I and many other columnists joined the chorus (see Thinking about Lagos future, The Nation, March 15, 2023). And many residents began to valorize Sanwo-Olu’s performance. Even some #EndSARS youths, who voted for Obi, switched from the LP candidate in Lagos to vote for Sanwo-Olu.

True, there were isolated cases of disturbances during the governorship election in Lagos, such cases were not limited to the state. Many other states reported similar cases. Nevertheless, the LP candidate in Lagos threw caution to the wind by raising all kinds of allegations, even against the electoral body. This is where Obi’s mentorship is a negative influence on the political process as these are the kinds of attack he has engineered. I wonder what country or state they seek to lead after denigrating same, by discrediting the electoral process and delegitimizing the winners, making Nigeria a laughing stock in the international press.

Nor should the LP candidate’s electoral loss in Lagos be viewed in isolation. In none of the eleven states Obi won in the presidential election has an LP candidate emerged as winner in the governorship race. It is largely because of lack of structure. Whatever they had by way of party executive in those states was concocted on the road to the presidential election campaign less than a year ago. The only exceptions are Alex Otti and Chijioke Edeoga in Abia and Enugu states, respectively. These are exceptional candidates, who had built their own structures over time. Otti has been running for the governorship in Abia since 2015, while Edeoga was once elected as a Local Government Chairman and a Member of the House of Representatives in Enugu. They only transferred their structures to the LP to assist Obi and, of course, themselves. If they eventually win, it will not be because of Obi but in spite of him.

Obi’s leadership is questionable in other respects. At no time did he caution his social media Obidients, who maligned other candidates during the campaigns; the pastors, who imposed his candidacy on their congregation; and the ethnic boasters in Lagos, knowing full well that they were inciting the indigenes of the land and other residents. He did not even say a word about the killings in the Southeast in the months leading up to the election. Well, perhaps he had a secret bond with them as all was quiet in order for him to rake in over 90 percent of the votes in the Southeast.

But all that is history now, although the negative image of Nigeria’s electoral process portrayed by Obi and his like in politics and the media will linger for some time to come. The good news is the elections are over now, and Nigeria has come out triumphant, like ogi funfun (white pap) out of a black pot.

An interesting strand in Antonio Gramsci’s popular theory of hegemony is the process by which a leader (or more precisely a ruling class) attains or maintains power by building alliances across various classes and social groupings. In multi-ethnic nations, such as Nigeria, such alliances will have to be built across regions, ethnic groups, faiths, and various unions and associations. Any leader or political party that succeeds in building such alliances in Nigeria will be on the way to electoral victory. This was clearly demonstrated by the victory of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, during the presidential election of February 25, 2023.

Unfortunately, however, the focus on a few shortcomings during the election and the attendant rhetoric of failure dwarfed the election’s major gains. To be sure, some of these gains have been discussed as part of post-election analysis. However, discussions have been limited to obvious gains, such as the widening of the political space beyond two major political parties to a three-, if not four-horse race; large youth participation and their influence on the race; and the role of technology, specifically, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, in checkmating over-voting and the practice by which powerful politicians generated desired results for themselves.

However, a major, but neglected, lesson from the election, which demands close attention, emanates from Tinubu’s path to victory, which highlights the key role of alliances in the attainment and maintenance of power in a diverse society, such as ours. In order to appreciate the lesson, it is necessary to review the path Tinubu had treaded.

Unlike Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who relied heavily on Christians and his ethnic group, spearheaded by Igbo youths, or Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, who could not even maintain inherited alliances, Tinubu took his time in forging alliances. He had been at it since he ran for Senate and won in 1992 and later joined forces with pro-democracy activists from 1993 through 1998, even while he was in exile. However, it was his election as Governor of Lagos State that led to a resurgence of his bridge-building activities, which became a preoccupation after he left office.

He established a political party after the seeming death of the Alliance for Democracy. With the political party, Action Congress, later renamed Action Congress of Nigeria, Tinubu widened his base beyond Lagos to encompass the entire Southwest zone. By 2013, the party’s power base had spread to Edo, Kogi, Bauchi, Plateau, Niger, and Adamawa, each of which had at least a Governor or a member in the National Assembly. Two different candidates from the North, Atiku Abubakar (2007) and Nuhu Ribadu (2011), even ran for President on ACN platform.

But Tinubu was not done. He went ahead for a much broader base by joining forces with others to form the merger of ACN with the Congress for Progressive Change, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, and a faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, which gave birth to the APC. His perceived role in the merger earned him the title of National Leader of APC, ostensibly conferred upon him by the press. The formation of the APC took Tinubu across the country, while many others visited his Bourdillon residence in droves. In the process, he succeeded in building alliances across regions, ethnic groups, unions and associations, and faith-based organizations, such as churches and mosques. The experience accelerated Tinubu’s coalition building on a national scale.

The coalition was first successfully deployed to propel Muhammadu Buhari to power in 2015 and re-election in 2019. It was Buhari’s failure to build such a coalition that led to his failed bid for the presidency on three previous occasions.

By the time Tinubu announced his run for the presidency in late 2021, he had established political structures in every state of the country. But he did not rest on his oars. He embarked on the campaign for his party nomination well before any other aspirant, building networks of supporters and garnering endorsements. He also embarked on a gruesome campaign schedule after winning the party primary. Unlike Atiku, Tinubu reconciled with co-contestants for the party’s presidential ticket. He covered more grounds than any other presidential candidate and sought local and international perspectives on how to run a successful presidential campaign. The result was a most comprehensive manifesto and a well organized campaign.

Rooted firmly in the alliances he had built, Tinubu was able to challenge sinister efforts within his own party to truncate his nomination. The challenge was met with a chorus of support, especially from Northern Governors. He even opposed policies supported by the President of his own party, such as the Naira redesign policy, leading his allies to approach the Supreme Court over the policy and winning a victory for the people. During the campaign, Tinubu also boldly led the conversations on other critical matters of state, such as fuel scarcity, removing fuel subsidy, and unifying the foreign exchange regime. On these national issues, his opponents either followed his lead, waffled or said nothing. Only a bold candidate with a nation-wide support base could have taken on some of these issues.

Tinubu’s alliances are evident in the spread of his votes: He won the majority of votes. He is the only candidate who won at least one state in each of five of the six zones.  He also won 25 percent of the votes in 30 states. No other candidate had similar spread or met the 24-state threshold.

The pattern of Tinubu’s votes is better appreciated in comparison to those of his competitors. For example, while Obi relied heavily on ethnic and Christian votes, Tinubu garnered votes across regions, ethnic groups, and faiths. Obi is the only candidate who won every state in his zone. He is also the only candidate whose zone did not allow any other candidate to have the required 25 percent of the votes.

Furthermore, while Obi won Lagos (Tinubu’s home state) with 582,454 votes, Tinubu only managed to garner a mere 5,111 votes in Anambra (Obi’s home state)! Yet, a Tinubu supporter was allegedly shot dead in Onitsha in Obi’s home state for celebrating Tinubu’s victory. The sad incident brings into sharper focus Hon. Ginika Tor’s tale of intimidation of APC supporters in the Southeast during the presidential election (see How we were prevented from voting Tinubu in the Southeast, The Nation, March 5, 2023).

It will be rewarding to investigate voter suppression in the Southeast in order to understand what happened to Tinubu’s allies in the zone.

I use the term democracy here in two senses, as a form of government and as a system by which the people elect their representatives in government through a free and fair electoral system. It is important that politicians and the electorate allow both to prevail as we seek to reproduce this democracy for the 24th year.

The focus today is on the electoral system as progress is being made with the collation of the results from the presidential and National Assembly elections held last Saturday, February 25, 2023. Let me begin by underscoring the significance of one word often used in describing democratic elections. The word is FAIR, which implies that perfection is never expected as no election is perfect, not even in the United States, the contemporary bastion of democracy.

This, however, does not mean that electoral umpires should be sloppy at their job. Rather, they should aim at ensuring that every voter has a fair shake at the election and that every vote counts. In this regard, the appearance of fairness in the electoral process is critical to its credibility and the legitimacy of the eventual winner. There is no doubt that Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, led by Professor Mahmood Yakubu, started out with good intentions and made adequate preparations for the elections.

But preparation is one thing; implementation is another. It is apparent that INEC faltered on implementation in a few areas, namely, timely delivery of materials to some polling units; adequate and timely staffing of some polling units; and timely uploading of the results to the IReV portal for public viewing. However, these shortcomings are peripheral to the overall conduct of the election, which many observers adjudged as generally free and fair, notwithstanding a few skirmishes here and there.

At the end of the day, only a few of the nation’s 176, 846 polling units experienced delay and, in such cases, INEC gave more time for voting. It is also not the case that INEC failed completely to upload the results to its viewing portal. It was a question of delay due to technical problems. Unfortunately, however, INEC delayed its explanation for the delay. But who knows? The communication delay might have been due to security reasons in connection with the INEC server. Hopefully, we will know the real reasons in due course.

In the meantime, the losing opposition parties, led by the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, had found an anchor for their complaints. After initially basing their argument on INEC’s failure to upload the results of the presidential election on its viewing portal on time for the public to see, they moved on to organize a media blitz to launch into full blast condemnation of the entire electoral process, accusing the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, of complicity. Ultimately, they called for the cancellation of the results and the conduct of another presidential election.

While their complaints need not be dismissed, it is necessary to point out that they all amount to red herring. The reasons for this assessment are not far-fetched. First, the agents of all political parties at the polling units have copies of the results at their polling units. The same results were collated at the ward, Local Government, and state levels. There was plenty of room for complaints at any and all of these preliminary stages before the results were brought to the National Collation Centre for submission. In other words, the results brought to the National Collation Centre had passed through three successive stages of verification in the presence of party agents.

Second, all political parties had compiled their results in their respected situation rooms as submitted by party agents. Therefore, the loss of the election was already obvious to the complainants. Accordingly, the escalation of their complaints was meant to achieve two purposes. One was a message to their supporters to get ready for protests. That’s probably why, in one of the press conferences, the Chairman of the PDP said that they may not be able to control their supporters. In this regard, it is noteworthy that only the All Progressives Congress has called for calm. To his credit, the party’s presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and the Lagos Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, appealed for calm from their supporters right after Lagos, their home state, was lost to the Labour Party candidate.

The second reason for the escalation of complaints and calling for the cancellation of the election was to discredit the election, first by discrediting the electoral umpire and by using that to dampen the legitimacy of the winner of the election. However, in the process, the complainants have succeeded in raising the political tension among their supporters.

Why are we at this point at all? First, most Nigerian politicians hate to lose and can hardly deal with defeat. Second, the LP and PDP candidates had unrealistic expectations going into the election. This is particularly true of the LP candidate, who has been projected as the winner of the election by various pollsters. Third, the escalation of the LP protest was aided by the godfather of Third Force in Nigerian politics, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who led the call for the cancellation of the election in a public statement.

The focus on complaints has dwarfed the major positive developments in the course of this election. There is a significant change in the nation’s electoral dynamics. For example, no politician can now take victory for granted as erstwhile strongholds were lost to other parties. Thus, the presidential candidate of the APC lost Lagos, his home base, to the LP candidate, while incumbent APC President, Muhammadu Buhari, lost his state to the PDP candidate. Besides, a number of (former) Governors, who used to scale through Senatorial elections, lost their elections.

At the same time, however, some features of our political culture persist:  Ethnicity and religion still loom large. Just look at where the leading candidates won the most votes. It is in their ethnic enclaves. This is particularly spectacular in Obi’s case. He won most Igbo and Christian votes virtually across the country. Even more significantly, while he won states outside his Southeast zone, no other candidate won any state in his zone. Not even the APC candidate, who had the widest spread of states won beyond his zone.

The above developments notwithstanding, it is important to honour the investment in this election by concluding the collation of results so that the processes of review and redress can begin. This is the message of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, the West African elders forum, and well meaning Nigerians.

As if following the sagacious advice of Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as always, set forth at dawn on this presidential journey. He went about it methodically, starting with close friends and longtime associates. After officially informing the President in 2021 about his plans, he started nationwide consultations in January 2022. Atiku Abubakar, now presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, was still in far away Dubai, while Peter Obi, now the opportunist presidential candidate of the Labour Party, was still in the Peoples Democratic Party with Atiku. While Tinubu has remained within the same progressive fold all his life, Atiku and Obi have crisscrossed various political parties in search of the political golden fleece.

After his mega rally finale in Lagos yesterday, Tinubu has covered more mileage at home and abroad in over a year than any other presidential candidate. At the same time, he has surmounted many more stumbling blocks than the other candidates.

For example, in the week leading up to the APC party primary, Tinubu surmounted the last-minute putative “consensus” candidacy of Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, and defeated him and other contestants in a landslide. A day after the primary, Tinubu set out to meet with all co-contestants and secured their support.

The campaign proper was greeted with vitriolic attacks, including social media misinformation; fake stories about his ancestry and academic qualifications; fake stories about American drug conviction; exaggerations of gaffes; irrelevant questions about his age and mental capacity; and a fake website claiming that the EFCC raided his “underground home” and recovered N400 billion of new notes.

One by one, the attacks began to fall on their face as Tinubu’s campaign strengthened state after state. The American government denied ever indicting, charging, or convicting him of any offense, despite the false documents paraded by a Nigerian-American, who claims to have investigated the matter. The EFCC issued a statement denying ever raiding his home of stashing away new notes. But come to think of it: The amount Tinubu was alleged to have stashed away equals the total amount of new notes the Central Bank claimed to have printed and distributed to Banks across the country. Much of the new notes is already in circulation, although grossly insufficient.

But the fake website appears not done. When I visited it just yesterday, here’s what I found:  “8 forty-fit (read feet) container loaded with old Naira notes has been captured leaving Tinubu House to bank”!

Like all negative campaigns, the goal of these fake stories was to achieve a variety of aims, including defamation of the person and character of Tinubu, misinformation of his campaign activities and messages, and deflection of attention from Tinubu’s main campaign promises, encapsulated in his 80-page manifesto, RENEWED HOPE 2023, available online.

As if these negative campaigns were not enough, the Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, came up with a last-minute currency redesign policy, which plunged the country into a cash crunch, thus complicating ongoing fuel shortages. It will be recalled that, contrary to global norms and standards, Emefiele, as incumbent Governor of the CBN, made every effort to run for president, including branded vehicles and obtaining the N100 million expression of interest form on the APC platform, but failed.

Not a few have seen his currency swap on the eve of the presidential election as a way of getting back at the successful candidate in the party primary in which his attempt at participation fell flat, even including his attempt at seeking court clarification. He must have felt deflated. Others surmised that he wanted to assist his townsman, who is the Vice-Presidential candidate of the PDP.

Sensing the possible damage to the APC-led government and political party, leading opposition candidates quickly sided with Emefiele’s policy, although some of them are now speaking from both sides of their mouth as the negative impact of the began to bite throughout the country. It took much convincing before the President began to appreciate the possible damage of the policy on his own government and political party. Even then, his attempt at amelioration still leaves much to be desired.

None of these negative developments has stopped Tinubu from making significant strides with his campaign. But why wouldn’t he gain more support, given his nation-wide campaign, focusing on strengthening national security, including stopping oil theft; revamping the economy, including diversification and expansion of revenue generation; improving on national infrastructure, including providing steady energy supply (electricity, oil, and gas); creating the necessary environment for industrial growth and private sector participation; creating jobs and providing jobs training for Nigerian youths; enlarging women participation in governance; and, above all, recruiting the best hands into the executive branch.

For those who still want more reasons to vote for Tinubu on Saturday, look for the videos and TV programmes in which former Lagos Governor, Babatunde Fashola, spoke about Tinubu’s achievements as his boss and read the latest articles by Mahmud Jega (One last pitch for Tinubu, Thisday, February 19, 2023) and Sam Omatseye (A Lagos Original, The Nation, February 20, 2023).

By the way, were you aware that much of the misinformation and fake website have been traced to Peter Obi’s campaign? Besides, did you ever notice that none of the opposition candidates ever attacked Tinubu’s ideas or programmes? Rather, they copied them in creative ways and attacked the achievements and non-achievements of the APC-led government of President Buhari and sought to put Buhari’s toga on Tinubu. On one occasion, Tinubu had to retort: The President is Muhammadu Buhari. I am Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Tinubu was drawing a contrast between Buhari’s experience and governance style, which derived from military training and service as well as his close advisers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, his (Tinubu’s) own experiences, which derived from decades of corporate accounting expertise, legislative experience as a Senator of the Federal Republic, and governance wizardry as a two-term Governor of Lagos State. The vision with which he created a template for growth and development in Lagos derived from these experiences and that template has been copied in part by both the Federal Government and the federating states. Those experiences underlie the robustness of Renewed Hope 2023 with which he hopes to create a template for lasting national growth and social development.

As implied above, it should be understood that all the attacks, fake stories, and relentless misinformation were intended to chip away from Tinubu’s sterling qualities and achievements, which no other presidential candidate could match.

The 108-page majority judgement delivered last Friday, January 27, 2023, by the Osun Governorship Election Petition Tribunal reveals three winners and three losers. The winners are: The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Progress, Adegboyega Oyetola; his political party, the APC; and the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS). The losers are: The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Ademola Adeleke; his political party, the PDP; and the Independent National Electoral Commission, which conducted the election and mischievously declared Adeleke the winner.

The main contention before the Tribunal was over-voting: The number of votes used in declaring the results exceeded the number of accredited voters and verified votes captured by the BVAS machine on election day. Such excess votes are illegal, according to the revised Electoral Act 2022. Although this was not immediately apparent on election day but reports were rife that election went on illegally until late in the night in some PDP strongholds, such as Ede. I was in Osun Government House at the time and heard those reports.

By the time Adeleke was declared the winner by INEC the following morning, Oyetola and the APC had had enough. They requested and obtained a certified true copy of the BVAS report from INEC shortly after the results were announced. After careful study, it was discovered that the total number of accredited voters and the number of votes recorded on Form EC8A in 749 (later reduced to 744) polling units in 10 Local Government Areas did not tally with the number of accredited voters and verified votes recorded in the BVAS machine for those polling units.

These discrepancies formed the major ground for their petition. Another ground is certificate forgery by Adelekle to which I return later.

On being served the petition by Oyetola and the APC, Adeleke and the PDP rushed to INEC to obtain a copy of the BVAS report, while the case was already pending in court. This led INEC to generate yet another BVAS report, termed “synchronized” BVAS report, without withdrawing the BVAS report previously issued to Oyetola and APC, leading to two contradictory BVAS reports tendered in court. Interestingly, both BVAS reports revealed significant over voting as affirmed even by INEC’s own witness. Perhaps sensing the contradictions, Adeleke’s counsel disowned the synchronized BVAS report.

Ordinarily, the synchronized BVAS report was expected to rhyme with the original BVAS report issued on election day and given to Oyetola and APC. This is what happens, for example, when you synchronize your emails with the same address on two or more devices. The same messages would appear on all of them. However, in the words of the Tribunal, “the said ‘synchronization’ (by INEC), rather than rhyme with each other, are inconsistent and contradictory”. The Tribunal frowned at this behaviour, by accusing INEC of “tampering with official records” and condemning it for producing “multiple accreditation reports, contrary to its avowed declaration to conduct free, fair, and credible election”.

The evidence on over voting was incontrovertible. Over voting ranged from just one vote to 409 in a single polling unit. According to the new Electoral Law, election shall be cancelled wherever over voting occurs as such votes had become illegal. There is no room for rerun in such cases as in the repealed Electoral Law used in the Osun rerun election in 2018. Guided by the new law, the Tribunal cancelled the results of the election in 744 polling units and deducted the illegal votes from the total votes previously declared by INEC for each candidate. It was a case of the heavens falling and sparing no one.

As is often the case in election rigging, the greatest beneficiary of illegal votes often loses the most votes upon cancellation. Accordingly, Adeleke lost as many as 112,705 votes from the cancellation, leaving him with 290,666, when the illegal votes were deducted from the previously declared result of 403,371. Oyetola lost 60,096 votes from the cancellation. This left him with 314,931, when the cancelled votes are deducted from his previously declared result of 375,027.

The Tribunal declared Oyetola as the winner of the election and ordered INEC to withdraw the Certificate of Return from Adeleke and issue it to Oyetola.

There was, of course, a scanty 8-page minority judgement, which overlooked the discrepancies between the BVAS reports and the form EC8A but anchors its argument on the non-use of the electoral register and the incompleteness of the BVAS report due to “power outage, network failure and paucity of relevant amenities”. Both issues were addressed as red herring in the lead  judgement.

Another ground for the petition was certificate forgery by Adeleke and his non-qualification to contest the election. All three judges ruled that Adeleke indeed forged his School Leaving Certificate. However, he could not be disqualified, because he also tendered other qualifications, which were not contested by the petitioners.

A few issues stand out from the Osun case and public discussion of same. First, the key role of the BVAS machine in checkmating over voting and forged election results has been established. Those who oppose its use either do not understand its function or are planning election mischief. However, the role of INEC officials, especially ad hoc staff hired during elections, deserves scrutiny. Their role in the Osun election impugned the integrity of INEC. It should henceforth ensure severe repercussions for any electoral malfeasance by its officials. Probing and prosecuting the officials involved in over voting in the Osun election would send an important signal.

Second, journalists and columnists should do their homework well on any story they wish to pursue during this election cycle. It is illiterate journalism for a TV host to ask why Adeleke was the only one punished for over voting in the Osun election. Clearly, that journalist neither read the Electoral Act 2022 nor studied the Tribunal judgement. As pointed out above, both candidates suffered from vote cancellation.

Third, some lawyers need further education as no well informed lawyer would accuse the lead judge in the Osun case of bias for the humorous reference to Buga dance. Judges, like priests, live in the real world and are free to draw on social events as well as use humour in their work. Interestingly, the same judge lambasted INEC for creating reports to save itself and compared the action to that of the proverbial bird, Eneke, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which claims to have learned to fly without perching since men have learned to shoot without missing. Was the judge also biased against INEC?