The elections of March 28, when Nigerians voted to elect the nation’s new President and members of the National Assembly, are now part of Nigeria’s political history. But the implications of the deleterious actions taken by political actors on that day will live with us every moment of our life.
I witnessed some of these actions while on election duty in Akwa Ibom State. Though I stayed on in Uyo, I was able to tap into a network of contacts comprising accredited journalists, election monitors and local politicians for information about the goings-on in the various local government areas.
Electioneering in Akwa Ibom was at its most intense during the lead-up to polling. The voter turnout on election day was expectedly high, in fact very high. This was where the good news ended.
From thence on things spiralled down the valley. In Akwa Ibom, INEC polling officials reported late at most of the polling units. But there was something even worse than their late arrivals. They, nearly all of them, reported for duty without result sheets with which to record votes as cast for the candidates. The result sheet is one of the sensitive materials that INEC cannot do without and which party agents must look out for at the polling units on Election Day. The absence of the result sheets stoked curiosity and provoked queries from among the voters and party agents.
At his ward in Ndiya, Nsit Ubium local government area, for instance, Mr. Umana Okon Umana, APC governorship candidate for the state, demanded explanation on why the result sheets were not available at the polling unit. The polling officer said right away that the result sheets were taken away by the electoral officer for the area. Umana insisted that the result sheets must be produced as part of the materials needed for the elections. He called the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Austin Okogie to lay a complaint about the missing result sheets. Okogie gave the assurance from his office in Uyo that he would look into and resolve the problem. Of course he never did. Now back to Ndiya. The electoral officer, seeing that Umana and his supporters, rearing to vote, would not budge without the result sheets, quickly produced some copies of what resembled the result sheets. But on closer examination it was not the result sheet issued by INEC. The result sheets produced by the electoral officer lacked the bar code or security feature that sets the genuine, INEC-issued result sheet apart.
Further enquiries as to why the all-important result sheet was missing led to a mind-boggling revelation that the result sheets were removed and sold to the PDP which is bankrolled by the state government. The full story alleged that most copies of the result sheets were in the possession of the state government, which had set up situation rooms to fill them up with numbers of accredited voters relayed to the situation rooms by compromised INEC ad-hoc staff recruited from the NYSC. The concocted results were later passed on to INEC for collation and announcement, the story further alleged.
Two days after the elections, Umana, the APC candidate, led a protest march from his party headquarters on Atiku Abubakar Avenue in Uyo and walked a distance of more than seven kilometres to the INEC office on Udo Udoma Avenue to address the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mr. Austin Okogie, over the widespread irregularities that marked the elections. Mr. Okogie, who did not deny offering to address the issue of missing result sheets as complained of by Umana (which of course he failed to do), however said materials were deployed to the local council areas in the state from the INEC head office in Uyo with all the sensitive components intact.
His comment was drowned in a din of boos by the crowd around him, which distinctly shouted an allegation that the REC had been compromised to do the bidding of the state governor in the elections.
Another point of interest to react to is the role of the police in the elections. I witnessed and learned of actions that are inconsistent with the constitutional duty of the police in the country. I witnessed at a polling unit in a primary school in Ikot Arankere, Ukanafun local council area, where a well known PDP member arrived to cart away a ballot box, ably assisted by officers of the Nigeria Police.
I would learn later that for most part of Ukanafun and Oruk Anam local council areas, the same PDP member, went around simply collecting ballot boxes from polling units, conspicuously assisted by the police.
Reports from my field contacts in Ibesikpo Asutan show that the attacks on the integrity of the elections were even more brazen and lethal than what happened in Oruk Anam. I learnt that a commissioner in the state went around Ibesikpo Asutan with more than 50 policemen who were shooting and snatching ballot boxes. The police allegedly shot and killed two young men who tried to resist the snatching of the ballot boxes. Before the elections, Etuk had warned parents in the area to keep their children away from coming out to vote for opposition parties to avoid harm befalling them.
A similar level of brigandage attended the polls in the five local council areas in the Oro nation; in Etinan, where the police, allegedly following orders from a functionary of the state government, shot and wounded three supporters of the APC for resisting the snatching of boxes in the area. Reports from Ikot Ekpene, Abak, Eket, Ikot Abasi, Nsit Ubium, Attai, Itu, Ikono, etc, painted similar pictures.
At the end of the day, PDP declared total victory in the NASS and Presidential elections in the state. But APC, has protested that there were no elections and petitioned the election umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission to annul the polls. The party has also demanded the reassignment of the current Resident Electoral Commissioner and the Police Commissioner in the state for their roles in the election fiasco.
APC has complained that in the presidential contest it had to face the combined onslaught of the PDP, INEC and Akwa Ibom State Command of the Nigeria Police. It said the two institutions of state, namely, the Nigeria Police and INEC were taken over by the state government and used to deliver the elections to the PDP contrary to the wishes of the people.
They party has consequently called for the redeployment of the heads of the Police and INEC in the state. It argued that their continued stay in their positions would undermine the integrity of the governorship and state house of assembly polls on April 11.
