Nigeria, a land lavishly endowed with natural resources, rarely plagued by natural disasters, and gifted with myriads of talented citizens, is today held down by successive line-ups of lousy leadership. The situation has rapidly evolved from one of hope to utter despair.
Out of these ashes of despair and serial hopelessness rose a new breed of Nigerians popularly known as the ObiDients, who, with steadfast resolve, are committed to breaking the prevalent cycle of corruption and ineptitude. They do this by conscientiously pursuing the path to true democracy, a robust political system, and an economy supporting the accessibility of basic social amenities for the ordinary people
The perennial struggles for true democracy in the country widely acclaimed as the giant of Africa are due to bad governance, saddled with poor political choices and representation. These new breeds of patriots desire a change in the political declaration that will usher in proper management and transparency in the political ecosystem.
Sadly, due to irregularities that have been a routine experienced during elections in Nigeria, INEC, the governing body for electoral processes in Nigeria, introduced the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System(BIVAS), publicly promised to citizens was the eternal remedy for Nigeria’s electoral maladies.
₦350 billion of taxpayers’ money was spent on this project by the INEC with a promise of delivering transparent, fair, and credible elections for the citizens of Nigeria.
The ObiDient movement championed rallies and media sensitization by encouraging citizens to obtain their Permanent Voters Card (PVC). PVC is used by eligible Nigerians to cast their vote and to choose whom they want to lead them. INEC first tested BIVAS machines on Sept 10, 2021, to ensure they were glitch-free and manual collations of results eliminated. While some citizens were overly trusting of the new arrangement, there was equally no shortage of skeptics. A rumor was rife that INEC would abandon transmission of results from the polling units via BVAS to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) contrary to its public declaration.
To douse the tension, on November 11, 2022, INEC issued a definitive press statement debunking the rumor and further affirmed that the claim was patently false. As with Ekiti and Osun State Governorship elections, the Commission repeatedly reassured Nigerians that it would transmit results directly from the polling units in real-time. The concrete evidence of this broadcast is all over the print, electronic and digital media.
In furtherance of this statement, on November 16, 2022, INEC again publicly reassured Nigerians that there was no going back on the deployment of BIVAS and the IREV portal. The Commission reaffirmed her loyalty and commitment to Nigerians. The INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, revealed that ‘‘Nigeria’s Electoral Act, enacted in February 2022, contributed to improved hope around the electoral process, reflected in the addition of 12.29 million new voters, 9.51 million of which were then validated, in Nigeria’s voter registration exercise, bringing the total number of registered voters to more than 93 million” (Chatham House 17th January 2023). His covenant statement on the electoral body’s commitment to transparent, fair, and credible 2023 elections motivated millions of new voters in Nigeria and the Diaspora to actively participate in the electoral process.
On February 25, 2023, millions of Nigerians came out in their numbers to vote for a candidate of their choice. Voter apathy drastically reduced. But were they allowed to vote?
All the assurances of security and protection of citizens during voting notwithstanding, the intimidation and suppression of voters who refused to vote for the candidate of the ruling Party were widespread, especially in some critical electoral states of the country; Rivers and Lagos states were astounding in this regard.
This misuse of the power of incumbency left many Nigerians who refused their macabre dance butchered, killed, or disfigured. Some patriotic but unfortunate fellows are still in critical condition at the hospitals while laying the dead to rest.
In addition to that terror against Nigerians, the electoral umpire (INEC) failed to abide by its legal guidelines as provided by the Electoral Act 2022, as amended for elections. Contrary to the provisions of the policies, presidential election results were not uploaded in real-time from the polling units from BVAS to IREV as mandated by relevant sections of the electoral law. Instead, it is either confiscating voted results or mutilation of marks; the entire ballot boxes are snatched, destroyed, or reworked. As if to justify the suspicion harbored by skeptics of the whole process, INEC was silent in condemning the malfeasance and taking reasonable action to address the anomaly in line with the provisions of the extant Electoral Act of 2022. The non-transmission of the presidential election results from BVAS to the IREV effectively rendered the process faulty and inconclusive. Sadly, INEC would accept none of that.
For emphasis, INEC and security operatives, by omission or commission, effectively participated in the manipulation, snatching of concluded election results and the ballot boxes, confusion and displacement of eligible voters, deliberately misdirected voters by sending out text messages on the night of the election day to inform eligible voters of new polling unit locations different from what was previously communicated to them Voters perceived this act as a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise them; it disenfranchised many voters.
Due to massive rigging and disenfranchisement, the 2023 presidential election being the 10th election in Nigeria’s democracy with the highest number of registered voters, was instead presented to reflect a semblance of the lowest voter turnout in the history of Nigeria’s presidential elections. More than 93 million Nigerians registered to vote, but only about 25 million showed up to vote. Simply put, it would appear that only two out of every ten registered voters at the polling booths exercised their civic duties. Contrastingly, there were 25.4 million Nigerians that voted in 1983. That means, roughly 40 years later, there was less than this number of turnout (25.2 million in 2023), even though the current population size of the country is about three times what it was then.
These misrepresentations hatched through voter suppression, result cancelation, invalidation of votes, mutilation of results, validation of underage voters’ ballots, forged result sheets not signed by polling unit agents, undercounting and overcounting of votes to favor the ruling party as against the actual results obtained at the polling units.
Despite the loud alarm raised by Nigerians to INEC to stop the rot and address these concerns, INEC declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the winner. This same Tinubu:
● Did not meet the constitutionally required 25% of votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja,
● In 1993, surrendered $460,000 to the US government after a Chicago court found the income came from heroin trafficking in case no.93C4483 and with at least six federal crimes according to the IRS Special Agent’s affidavit in these cases:
1) money laundering (18 U.S.C $1956),
2) Using funds from unlawful activities for $1957);
3) Bank fraud (18 U.S.C $1344)
4) Failure to file tax returns (26 U.S.C $7203)
5) Lying against federal agents (18 U.S.C $1001) and
6) Conspiracy (18 U.S.C $371) as President-elect.
The 2023 electoral fraud in Nigeria orchestrated many evils unheard of before now:
▪ the death of many Nigerians by suicide,
▪ women protesting naked on the street,
▪ youths are despairingly protesting in different states of the federation.
It would appear the media is compromised, as it glaringly turned a blind eye to all the insecurities, harassment, and unrest in the country. Its inability to report the actual state of the nation. This act, coupled with the National Broadcasting Commission’s (NBC) continual censorship of the media houses and the harassment of outspoken religious leaders and citizens by those in authority, would, if unchecked, precipitate the departure of Nigerian citizens into exile to protect their lives from an impending calamity that will befall the nation should the judiciary fail to uphold the will of the masses at the election tribunal. The impunity is already unbearable, and Nigerians would flee the country or, as has been severally warned, protest and fall by the bullets of soldiers desperate to do the bidding of their paymasters.
These dangers not notwithstanding, the ObiDients and firmly, are taking their stand to retrieve the stolen mandate of the people and to restore the soul of a dying nation which the umpire, INEC, marched upon when it declared Bola Tinubu the winner of the 2023 presidential election without him fulfilling the constitutional requirements.
It is indeed trouble times for a nation with a population of 220 million people. We cannot allow this illegality to stand. Nigeria’s democracy is in danger, and we are here pleading for your support to help us stand up for our democracy using peaceful and every legal process available to ensure the actual results get announced, which reflect the will of the people. Please help us in supporting the citizens on the ground protesting peacefully to save our dying democracy and to ensure they are not starved of the needed oxygen to maintain the momentum.
Our democracy is under attack, and we don’t want instability; we want democracy.
SAVE NIGERIA USA GROUP will channel all donations solely to this cause.