OPINION: How INEC’s BIVAS Aim Was Rubbished During Ekiti Election | READ DETAILS

Voters apathy, vote buyers and ballot sellers destroy the aim of the Biometric Voters Identification System (BIVAS) deployed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the hope of galvanizing mass turnout and stopping electoral malpractices at the weekend’s Ekiti State Gubernatorial Election.

Fewer than expected numbers of the electorate turned up to vote in the off-season poll as both vote buyers and sellers had a field day in the exercise from which the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Mr. Biodun Oyebanji, emerged victorious.

Oyebanji, the immediate past Secretary to the State Government, won in 15 out of the 16 Local Government of the state, scoring 187,057 votes. His closest challenger, Mr Segun Oni, of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) polled 82,211 votes while the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Bisi Kolawole, scored 67,457 votes.

749, 065 voters out of 988,923 registered voter collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) to vote in 2,445 polling units, 177 wards and 16 local councils of the state. 16 political parties took part in the poll.

A heartwarming development from the poll was INEC making good its promise to transmit results electronically as prior to the announcement of the results at the collation centre, all results from the 16 local government areas had been uploaded on IReV, INEC’s result viewing portal.

However, an election monitoring group in the Ekiti Poll, Yiaga Africa, alleged rampart vote-buying, selling and related electoral malpractices in the exercise, which the presence of security agents failed to stop.

Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, said: “Secrecy of the ballot was compromised as people could see how voters marked the ballots in Igede Ward II 13-13-06-014 in Irepodun/Ifelodun LGA. Party agents for the APC, PDP and SDP clustered around the voting cubicle and saw how voters marked their ballot papers. Yiaga Africa also received reports of missing names of registered voters on the BVAS. The voters were prevented from voting despite holding INEC issued PVCs.”

Also, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) alleged that its field observers documented 41 instances of vote-buying and selling at polling units across six local councils during the election.

Chairman of CDD’s Election Analysis Centre (EAC), Prof. Adele Jinadu, made the disclosure during a media briefing in Abuja

According to the CDD, vote-buying took the form of cash collection in brown envelopes to disguise the content in order to avoid arrest by anti-corruption agencies.

Jinadu said: “CDD-EAC observers documented 41 instances of vote buying and selling at polling units. Observer data showed incidents of vote-buying and selling in LGAs like Ado-Ekiti, Ijero, Ikole Irepodun/Ifelodun, Ise/Orun and Moba.

“One of the observable patterns of vote buying was the collection of cash in brown envelopes, which was apparently meant to disguise the content of the envelopes in order to avoid arrest by the anti-corruption agencies”.

But the CDD admitted that the election was peaceful and showed progress in terms of administration by INEC. However, Jinadu said there remained several areas of concerns which call for stronger management of elections by INEC.

Similarly, Co-convener, Nigerian Civil Societies Situation Room, James Ugochukwu, said though security officials arrived the polling units on time and were civil in their conduct, “the impact of their presence was not felt in voters’ coordination at most of the polling units. Also, the police failed to halt the apparent vote-buying witnessed by observers in virtually all the polling units. We wish to remind the police authorities of their responsibilities to halt and apprehend those involved in voters’ inducement and maintain law and order throughout the process and beyond.”

The Ekiti police Command made a few, negligible arrest for alleged vote-buying during the poll, while obviously the larger perpetrators escaped the police net.

In a recent editorial published by The Dream Daily newspaper and made available to stakeholders in the electoral processes, including the Presidency, members of the National Assembly, INEC National Headquarters, political parties and foreign missions in Nigeria, this newspaper had surmised that BIVAS would not substantially stop vote-buying in its track in the Nigerian electoral ecosystem.

In the aforesaid editorial (https://www.thedreamdaily.com/agenda-2023-editorial-series-inec-build-that-e-voting-app/) , The Dream Daily submitted that a veritable way was for INEC to build an Android-based e-voting app as alternative to physical voting. This newspaper had argued that making such dowloadable e-voting app would level the space against vote-buying as it would allow voters to vote from the privacy of their homes, which would make it difficult to induce a larger percentage of voters as opposed to the current analogue system which forces all voters to come to the polling booth where they can be induced financially.

While it is possible for political agents to go to voters at home and buy their votes, The Dream Daily Newspaper believes that there more Nigerians of integrity who would not sell their votes than the despicable few currently doing so. If these majority Nigerians, who usually stay away from casting their votes for sundry reasons, including violence and the inconveniences of physical voting, are given the e-voting option on their phones, this would galvanize voter turnout and solve the problem of apathy. They would also out-vote ballot-sellers. In any case, such a level-playing field would make it much more expensive to buy votes and should make politicians see the futility of such criminal, electoral strategy.

An e-voting app by INEC for the 2023 election would also reduce the cost of election in the country as INEC does not need to print plastic voters card since voters’ identification would be linked to their registered phone numbers on the app.

INEC would also print lesser number of ballot papers and other election-related materials, or spend money on the logistics these demand, even as the huge security personnel needed to police elections would be drastically reduced.

Nigeria would also not need to shut down the economy on any polling day.

Ballot snatching and violence would be minimized as more voters vote on-line.

Overall the financial and economic win which an e-voting app would deliver to the country cannot be over-emphasized as the huge funds expended on the electoral processes by government would be drastically reduced and such saved funds can then be applied to other sectors of the body-politic like health, roads, education and other public infrastructure.