Anambra Election: Intersociety, CLO Urge Comprehensive Investigations Into BVAS And Other Failures

Enugu – The leaders of the Int’l Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), the Southeast Zone of the Civil Liberties Organization (Southeast CLO) and the Southeast Based Coalition of Democracy and Human Rights Organizations (SBCHROs) are strongly calling for comprehensive investigations into the just conducted Anambra Governorship Election held on 6th and concluded on 9th November 2021.

The Rights Groups are asking that such investigations must be hybrid or have national and international dimensions and centered on failures associated with BVAS machines, their handlers and despicable roles played by other stakeholders.

The calls were made in a statement made available to TNC on Wednesday and signed Emeka Umeagbalasi and Chidimma Eva Udegbunam for Intersociety and Comrades Aloysius Attah and Vincent Ezekwueme Southeast CLO.

The groups suggested that the outcomes of such investigations shall be geared towards ensuring that severe sanctions are meted out to those found culpable, INEC’s ICT and its management staffers totally overhauled and syndicate presently manning same dismantled; thereby leading to the repositioning of the Electoral Umpire and getting it right in future elections and restoring international confidence in the country’s electoral process.

“This joint call of ours has become extremely important and geared towards exposing an existing gang of digital electoral fraudsters manning the Commission’s ICT who go about rigging digitally with reckless abandon using digital terrorism to facilitate massive disenfranchisement of millions of registered voters, thereby putting their collective sacred electoral mandate and future in grave danger and selling same to the highest bidders in the end at accursed prices.

“We are deeply dismayed that for the first time in the history of democratic elections in Anambra State and beyond, INEC has supervised an all-important Governorship Election that deliberately and systematically shut out about 500,000 PVC holders including over 250,000 disenfranchised by the Commission’s massively failed BVAS; and as if that was not enough, the INEC’s poorly conducted Poll, in the end, produced an “electoral college results” of total valid votes cast of 241,000 and the declared winner’s results of 112,000.

“This is the lowest governorship total results in the history of elections in Nigeria.

“This is out of the State’s total registered voters of 2,446,000 and PVC holders of not less than 2.1m,” the statement said.

The groups regretted that instead of the Commission apologizing to Anambra voters and its citizens and Nigerians in general and reprimanding its compromised staffers particularly its key top ICT officials and publicly overhauling same, the Commission is busy mobilizing entities with ‘minus characters’ including the so called “CSO Leaders” to engage in a harvest of praise-singing, image laundering and legitimization of the highly non-inclusive and discriminatory Poll.

They said while forensic and administrative investigations are mandatorily required to ascertain the causes of widespread failure of the INEC’s Bi-modal Voters’ Capturing System Machines (BVAS) in at least many of the Anambra State’s 5,720 polling units and 326 collation centers, roles played by the INEC’s Abuja headquarters of its ICT and its headship as well as the deployed ICT HODs must be thoroughly investigated and those found culpable sanctioned.

“As a matter of fact, those to be internally and externally investigated thoroughly include the three ring leaders manning the INEC’s National Directorate of ICT- Chidi Nwafor, INEC National Director of ICT, Oladunjoye Abimbola (Ms) and Agwu Ama Ibom (top officers of the Commission’s National ICT Department).

“While Emeka Nnaji, Anambra Head of Department of ICT for the Commission should be spared or cleared, the deployed HODs for the Poll including HOD Rivers (in charge of Aguata), HOD Ebonyi, HOD Enugu, HOD Akwa Ibom (in charge of Anambra West/East) and former HOD, Delta (in charge of Ihiala), must be thoroughly investigated and sanctioned.

“The sanctions under demand are in line with the principles of vicarious and direct liabilities.

“Investigations under demand must include unmasking the causes of the widespread BVAS failure in many of the State’s 5,720 polling units and 326 collation centers and the likelihood of deliberate programming of same for failure which could most likely have been caused by corruption and immorality including demand and acceptance of heavy bribes.

“This is more so when from available information, the BVAS machines for the Poll were successfully test-run two to three days before the Poll with 95% functionality.

“We also have it on good authority that the secured areas’ pass codes for the BVAS machines for Anambra Governorship Poll were hijacked and centralized, thereby making it almost impossible for resident HODs in the State to access and easily apply them during the Poll.

“We understand, too, that enough funds to the tune of over N4billion was released to INEC for Anambra Poll,” they alleged.

The groups noted that a lot of works needs to be done by international partners and anti-graft bodies in sanitizing the country’s electoral umpire and process, warning that with the way things are going, Nigeria’s democracy is heading to irreversible ruination and the present crop of Civil Society organizations and their leaders are dangerously becoming conspiratorial.

“This they do by aiding and abetting the electoral roguery or armada of fraud and their perpetrators.

“Therefore, it is time for international development partners involved in funding the country’s electoral process and its umpire as well as anti-graft agencies to mount sustained pressures on INEC and the country’s political leaders to fully democratize and rid the process including INEC of teething corruption and related malpractices,” they said.

 

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