The 2023 Presidential Election And The Conspiracy Theory -By Gozie Irogboli

The day March 1, 2023, will go down as one of the saddest day in the annals of Nigerian political history. Ironically, it was expected to be a day of joy when the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the supposed winner of the February 25^, Presidential Election; a day Nigerians supposed to know who takes over the reins of government from the failed APC regime. It was the day Nigerians who voted to be manumitted from the stranglehold of the APC regime woke up to the rude shock to hear the news contrary to their wish. The mood of the nation was like one in mourning as people could be seen in groups with somber faces in street corners, newsstands, work places and sundry other places, discussing what was seen as blatant display of perfidy and insensitivity by the nation’s electoral umpire. There was an uneasy calm that pervade the entire nation and even among the supporters of the declared winner of the election, it was cautious optimism. The only place where there is what looked like celebration was in the residence of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the one that INEC declared winner of the election. The situation seems aptly captured in the expression I found trending on the social media platform that: nobody is happy after a robbery operation except the armed robber.

Indeed, what happened was like an open robbery operation, a coup and a subversion of the will of the people. Nigerians had trooped out in great number as never before to the designated polling units across the country to exercise their franchise, expecting a breather from the moribund All Progressives Congress (APC) regime that had mismanaged the affairs of the country in the past eight years as they have been assured that with the new electoral law and the use of Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) technology, their votes will count. But alas, it was a disappointment of unimaginable proportion as INEC betrayed Nigerians by announcing what is seen by many as the falsified result against the pleas and protests from concerned Nigerians. It was an open heist that made many Nigerians feel humiliated, dispirited and disillusioned. Many have lost faith in Nigeria and in its public institutions and many have vowed never to vote again.

Clearly, what the INEC did was a total scam which must be reversed sooner or later. That the INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu chose the wee hours of the morning, 4:00 hours when people were supposed to be in bed to announce the result indicates that his motive was fishy and it was intended to forestall spontaneous violent reaction from the Nigerian electorates whose will he had blatantly subverted.

It is equally disappointing and baffling that despite the hues and cries that attended the conduct of the election and the irregularities and lack of transparency associated with the collation of the election results that the president Mohammadu Buhari could dismiss everything thusly: “none of these issues registered represents a challenge to the freeness and fairness of the election,” making many think that he was complicit in the grand design to subvert the will of the people. But if the president may be exonerated on the ground of the reports available to him, the INEC chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu cannot. He showed his defiance from the onset when he was intimated about the irregularities that marred the conduct of the election by huffishly asking aggrieved people to go to court.

There are glaring irregularities as captured in the various video evidence in the public domain, from the intimidation of voters, thuggery, snatching of ballot boxes, to the destruction of ballot papers among other forms of electoral violence. But the most unpardonable was committed at the collation of the results by INEC itself, thereby giving vent to the conspiracy theory as is widely believed. Prior to the election, INEC has said that the results would be transmitted directly from the polling unit to its portal in real-time for the public’s viewing. But this never happened. This shows that the INEC flouted its own procedure by changing the rule midway. There was evidence that some of the electoral results were uploaded days before the actual election took place. There were cases of identical result figures between two different states and cases of copying and pasting the same figures from the previous elections and other innumerable anomalies.

Again, there was an increase in the number of registered voters and voters’ enthusiasm this time but the result published by INEC did not reflect that, indicating obvious case of vote suppression and result allocation. According to the INEC records, the total number of registered voters for the 2023 presidential election is 93,469,008 while total number of votes cast is 25,286,616 representing about 27% of the registered voters. But in the last presidential election in 2019, the total number of registered voters was put at 82,344,107 while the total vote cast was 28,614,190 which is about 35% voters’ turnout. At 27% turnout, it means that this election is the lowest since the current democratic dispensation in 1999. But, from all indication, the voters’ enthusiasm was higher in this period than the previous era for obvious reasons but the result was against the apriori expectation and the only explanation for this is: vote suppression, vote allocation and result falsification.

Publishing what looked like the actual result wherein the APC was shown to have lost the election in Katsina, the home state of the incumbent president, Lagos, the state of the APC presidential candidate and Nasarawa, the home state of the APC chairman and the continuous reference to it the INEC officials and the APC chieftains, indicates that it was deliberate to give a semblance of a credible election in order to hoodwink the people. That Tinubu lost in Lagos where he resides and in Osun, his home state were not enough to establish that the election was transparent and credible. It actually indicates that he was rejected by his people and by extension by the whole nation. So, what Tinubu received in actuality from INEC was the booby prize for a poor performance.

No doubt, the gung-ho attitude of the INEC chairman in huffishly telling the aggrieved parties to go to court tells me that the conspiracy angle to the election story is real. Prof. Mahmood’s aplomb and attitude is characteristic of one who knew what he was doing. The whole charade from the conduct of the election, collation to the declaration of the result seemed contrived to hoodwink both the electorates and the highest bidder. And from all indications, it seems the conspirators knew there are loopholes in their insidious operation and knew it will be up turned later when subject to intense scrutiny. It is like Judas collecting money from the Jews to betray Jesus with the hope that Jesus would evade arrest. Tinubu has obviously been scammed without knowing it. The act has a lot of bobby traps. One of the traps is the fact that from the said result declared, Tinubu did not meet the requirement to be declared winner because he didn’t get 25% of the vote cast in the FCT. The law said the winner must get the highest vote cast and 25% of the vote cast in at least 24 of the 36 states and the votes in the FCT. In English language and other languages including symbolic logic the word and is conjunctive meaning both or jointly except it means another thing in legal drafting, the courts will tell us.

But, if what INEC did was not done to scam their client, the president-select, as people has chosen to call the alleged winner, then, the perpetrators of this electoral fraud are clever by half for they did a very shoddy job. They probably thought that as Nigerians are said to be people with very short memory and laissez-faire attitude, they would soon forget the whole thing, after making noise for few days and life goes on. But this may not be the case here. Nigerians are truly aggrieved and are prepared to go the whole hog to seek redress in this case. In this age of internet connectivity, it may easy to commit electronic fraud but not so easy to cover it up.  

Already, the Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have both gone to court to challenge the result of the election as expected. And from the mounting of evidence being raked up, INEC and the APC cannot get away with the putsch executed against the electorates. I know Nigerians have not yet heard the last of this story. The event is unfolding and may end up in a re-run or runoff election. Is interim government loading? Are we going to have the handover date shifted to October 1, 2023? The world is watching as the drama unfolds.

Gozie Irogboli,

An economist, a novelist and a public policy analyst

(goziei@yahoo.com)