It’s D-Day Today: Nigeria Decides

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It’s D-Day and many Nigerians are out to vote with the confidence that the Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, will deliver on its promises.

There are others lamenting their inability to get their PVCs and therefore are ineligible to vote.

Nigerians record myriad of problems every election time and each time appeared worse than the previous one.

The head of the electoral commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has promised to make the 2023 general elections ‘the best’ Nigeria has ever had and all eyes are on him.

Will he deliver or not?

One of the disappointments of today’s election is the disenfranchisement of many Nigerians who registered to vote but could not because they could not access their PVCs.

Some did not get to register at all.

Some who did merely engaged in wasted efforts.

Reports abound of discovery of thousands of PVCs in the forests, inside gutters or toilets which the Independent National Electoral Commission could not explain.

Some PVCs have ended up in the palace of Baales and traditional rulers who know nothing about their owners and whose owners could not trace them.

With over 90 million registered voters and over 23,000 election duty staff, Nigeria’s election is a big endeavour.

”It’s like conducting elections for the whole of West Africa and beyond,” Prof Yakubu said on numerous occasions and this is because Nigeria has more registered voters than all its 14 West African neighbours combined.

The elections have always been problematic. Insecurity is rife in four of the six geo-political zones of the country.

Several attacks have been carried out on the facilities of the electoral commission, INEC, in the last four years.

Nigerians have raised issues against some INEC officials but INEC was not seen to have responded to these allegations of bias against its officials.

While they allegedly did not renew the tenures of Outstanding Commissioners, they retained some of those whom the public has identified to be allegedly corrupt and partisan and their actions appeared to have aided some controversial judgments.

For instance, the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) called for the redeployment of the Lagos Resident Electoral Commission of the INEC, Olusegun Agbaje, in the buildup of Nigeria’s presidential election.

The letter to the INEC chairman had accused Agbaje of working against the Igbo in Lagos by depriving them of their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) and trying to incite violence.

Intersociety’s letter alleged that millions of citizens of voting age of full blood Nigerian citizenship have been denied voting right by not being captured as voters and issued with permanent voters’ cards.

The group alleged massive reports of personal data theft and destruction, diversion and impersonation of the registered citizens and citizens-under-registration’s PVCs or personal data supplied to INEC.

Intersociety alleged that tens of millions are denied registration and issuance of PVCs particularly the non Muslims of South-East and South-South residencies. “Denied registration and massively disenfranchised are large numbers of citizens of the two regions living outside their regions where they reside or work.

“Contrarily, citizens of voting age especially the non Christians in the North and other parts of the country are so maximally captured as registered voters and issued with PVCs that millions of children of underage and illegal Muslim migrants sharing same faith with them are sought after and registered as “voters” and issued with PVCs”

Following widespread outcries that greeted the brazen partisanship of the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Lagos State, Olusegun Agbaje, over his anti South-East or Igbo genocidal comments/PVC posture, the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) called for the immediate removal of the REC.