Postponement of presidential election

Yakubu Oshiomhole Secondus

PDP decided to collude with INEC to postpone the elections and buy time. The theorists alleged that most of the personnel at INEC were appointed or recruited when PDP was in power and they still owe their allegiance to the party. Therefore, the theory goes that the INEC personnel decided to sabotage the elections at the prompting of PDP so that there would be more time to gain support for Atiku Abubakar.

APC supporters are asking why PDP followers knew beforehand that the elections would be postponed if indeed their party was not working in tandem with INEC. Another reason on which this theory was based was that so much ‘noise’ was made by the opposition to have Amina Zakari, a national commissioner with family ties to President Buhari, removed as head of logistics.

The ploy according to the theorists was to have her discredited and removed from her earlier role as head of logistics, which actually happened when another national commissioner, Prof. Okechukwu Ibeanu, was named head of Electoral Operations and Logistics Committee. And the reorganization was done as far back as October 2018, when INEC tinkered the chairmanship of five of its 15 standing committees. As a result, Zakari’s position as chairman of INEC’S Electoral Operations and Logistics Committee was changed to Health and Welfare Committee.

In fact, religious bodies are also joining the fray of postulations. The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) said a major factor responsible for the failure of INEC to kick-start the 2019 general elections is the commission’s lack of concern for the divine will. In a statement by its director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, MURIC said: “Divine truth will always overwhelm social truth. INEC kept telling Nigerians that it was ready. But Almighty Allah knew that it was not actually ready.

“They told the Federal Government that no stone had been left unturned, but all along, INEC forgot a major factor. It ignored the divine factor, the INEC chairman should have added by the grace of Allah or by God’s power. By the grace of Allah or by the grace of God is more powerful and more correct than the popular phrase ‘in sha Allah’ because ‘in sha Allah’ simply means ‘if Allah wishes’.”

In effect, MURIC is saying that for not adding the epithet, the election was doomed to fail!

Meanwhile, insiders at INEC said by Wednesday, February 13, management of the electoral body knew that the February 16 presidential and national assembly elections would not hold, no matter the magic wand employed. The INEC insider theorists say they saw the handwriting on the wall as early as Wednesday but the INEC chairman was not brave enough to face the nation, he had to deploy the

‘thief in the night’ approach to pass the all-important message.

From the inside sources too came the theory that because of the pervading atmosphere of mutual distrust and suspicion at the commission, people went about their businesses in hushed tones, preparing for the worst, which was imminent.

They noted that based on the experience from elections organised by the commission, the signs were already there that something was going wrong. “But many of the commissioners were not comparing notes or even talking to one another, thereby compounding a situation that would lead to the embarrassing postponement of the elections. The prevailing atmosphere of in-fighting, inexperience of the logistics committee and poor prepara- tions was further compounded by poor co-ordination by the leadership of INEC.”

There was also the poor weather theory. But punching holes in the official explanation of the INEC boss that the postponement was partly due to the cloudy harmattan weather, which hindered the evacuation of sensitive materials to locations across the country, the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, said that was far from the truth. The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) corroborated that there were no disruptions caused by poor weather.

“The agency in line with the directive of the Minister of State (Aviation), Sen. Hadi Sirika, had earlier ensured a 24hour operation at all Nigerian airports on Friday February 15, to facilitate the transportation of INEC materials nationwide,” NAMA said in a statement issued on Sunday.

Far more bizarre is the theory that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) acting the script of the ruling party, allegedly held on to some sensitive electoral materials in its vaults. This way, the marked 10 states would have effectively been stampeded into staggered elections.

However, an INEC insider who is familiar with operations for election explained the process thus: “Typically, INEC takes delivery of sensitive electoral materials, including ballot papers, two weeks to any given election. It is then warehoused with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). One week to the election, INEC sends the materials to state offices. Basically, seven days to any election, all the sensitive materials are already at the states.

“At this stage, the resident electoral commissioners and electoral officers at the state level hold a pre-election conference with party agents and all who will be involved in the elections just to brief them and lay out the procedures. They are informed about the state of preparations, that the materials have arrived and that they are ready to be distributed. This is routine like a normal stakeholders meeting.

“The materials are then moved from the CBN zonal or state offices to various INEC offices in the state on the Tuesday preceding the elections, sometimes on Wednesdays — depending on how big the state is. By Friday, the materials are usually already at the ward levels, and then they are distributed to the polling units by Saturday morning. That is how things run on a good day. But in this case, we started seeing movement of materials on Thursday to the states.”

But will the elections go ahead as scheduled this Saturday? While the INEC chairman has assured Nigerians that the fiasco will not repeat itself, the answer to that question is still hanging in the wind.