2023 ELECTION: Buhari, INEC Deliberately Betrayed Nigerians – Anglican Archbishop, Most Rev. Isaac Chijioke Nwaobia

2023 ELECTION: Buhari, INEC Deliberately Betrayed Nigerians – Anglican Archbishop, Most Rev. Isaac Chijioke Nwaobia

The Archbishop of Anglican Church, Aba Province & Bishop, Diocese of Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area of Abia State, The Most Rev. Isaac Chijioke Nwaobia, has described the events of February 25, 2023 presidential election and the results announced afterwards, as a deliberate act of betrayal by president Muhammadu Buhari and the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu.

The Archbishop in his address during the second session of the 5th synod at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church Mkpuka which lasted from Thursday, May 11 till Sunday 14, recalled that President Buhari and Yakubu, repeatedly assured Nigerians that the 2023 general election would be conducted free and fair and all processes done electronically respectively.

The clergy regretted that against what Buhari and INEC promised, they dashed the hope and trust of Nigerians, betrayed the citizens by conducting a “ flawed, non-credible, non-transparent and most corrupt electoral process in Nigeria.”

While addressing the state of the nation during the synod, Most Rev. Nwaobia in his address subtitled; 2022 Election; The Betrayal, The Tragedy, The Shame, said;

My people, in the last two years I started developing faith in this country Nigeria. I woke up to listen to one innocent looking cabal called Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.

 He promised us credible elections.
 He demanded electoral laws from the National Assembly, Mr. President signed the amended electoral law.
 Yakubu promised that our PVC is our authority
 Yakubu promised that Votes will count
 BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) will be used
 Results will be uploaded in real time
BEHOLD!
 The man dashed our hopes and shut down the IREV (INEC Result Viewing Portal) of the Presidential result and claimed a technical hitch.
 He rushed to announce the result without handling the critical areas.
 He conducted a flawed, non-credible, non-transparent and most corrupt electoral process in Nigeria.

He argued that a credible 2023 election void of any form of malpractices, was an achievable task with the money budgeted for the election, but the president and INEC Chairman chose to betray Nigerians and also refused to upload election results in real time as they had promised.

“President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) without being prompted by anyone, repeatedly promised Nigerians a free and fair election in February 2023.

Buhari promised that a transparent 2023 election would be his legacy project. Yet, what happened? International observers have derided both Nigeria and the elections. Both Buhari and the INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu knew that giving Nigeria a flawless general election was doable, that the money projected to meet the logistics that would make the poll transparent was duly budgeted for and the monies made available to the electoral agency.

The computing systems that would make it possible to upload results in real time, and so deny election riggers the opportunity of cooking the figures at the so-called collating centers, were designed. The right laws were in place. The INEC chairman was even seen in a video boasting that the results would be uploaded as they trickled in from the polling units, Nigerians had such a right.

Then the day arrived for Buhari and the INEC chairman to work their talks, and they betrayed Nigeria. Suddenly, the results were not uploaded. Suddenly again, the ones that had perhaps mistakenly been uploaded were scrubbed.

Then in the Nigeria of 2023, despite all the billions spent buying the needed computing gadgets, despite all the progress in computing and telephony, Nigeria returned to the dark ages of manual collation of election results, which enabled all sorts of criminalities to be acted out upon the peoples’ votes.

Why have I termed this failure a betrayal? It is a betrayal because the means to make the 2023 election angelically transparent was available to Mr. President and INEC. But the two chose to betray their country. They made a deliberate choice. I have linked both of them together because Buhari appointed Prof. Yakubu. Had there been a direct transmission of the results from each polling unit to the general public through the portals, all the mayhem which played out in the collation centers would have been avoided including court cases.

That the choice was there to make the votes from each unit to be uploaded directly to the public, but, that route was not taken, must be noted.

Betrayal entails unfaithfulness, duplicity, infidelity, treachery and disloyalty. If faults other than betrayal had caused the chaos, unmitigated havoc, bedlam and anarchy with which Nigeria’s sordid history was worsened on February 25, 2023, that day’s election should have been canceled. That brings us to the tragedy of that election.

That day’s poll was a tragedy because it was an unmitigated disaster for Nigeria. The people’s choice of who should be their freely elected leader was disdained as in despised, spurned, disparaged and treated with massive and audacious contempt. This is tragic because the election meant the world for our teaming youths. Suddenly, matters Nigeriana began to matter to them. If this election is not redeemed and the wrongs done to their human rights (implicit in the very act of their being constitutionally responsible to choose their own leader), is not redressed, reversed and punished, they would become alienated, and totally so.

It is tragic for a nation to go through the hollow ritual of holding an election every four years. It is tragic for a nation that their President and Chairman of an electoral body would openly commit themselves to organizing free and fair elections and then go ahead and conduct the worst election in the history of the world, after having deliberately refused to engage an array of computing and telephony equipment that had been purchased for such purpose. Such acts of lawlessness and criminality always weaken a society.”

The clergy demanded that the INEC Chairman apologises to Nigerians, tender his resignation and away eternal judgement.

“The INEC Chairman and his team should apologize to the whole world, resign and wait for eternal judgment for the stress caused to our Country Nigeria. He has sent us backward about thirty years behind.

“I enjoin all Patriots of this Nation to join and pull back this country. The Nigerian judiciary should rise to the occasion and give a godly judgment. The Nigerian Judiciary must rekindle hope to all and the international communities” the Archbishop added.