Atiku
By Faith Edet Bassey
I really wonder for how long we have to deal with dishonest leaders. Leaders who lie without remorse, who cheat the people, deceive the people and relentlessly play on their intelligence.
When Alhaji Abubakar Atiku started yelling that he had been cheated on the Monday following the Presidential elections, I thought, well, perhaps he must have a point. Then he said the results he was getting from the field showed he was ahead while the results being announced on TV and radio by the returning officers showed that he was losing by an ever-increasing gap as the results came in.
Then he said he was going to prove that the elections were rigged by showing that the INEC server( not Website, which is accessible to all) contained results showing he won the elections by 1.6 million votes. As to how these results got to the INEC server, he offered that the Smart Card Readers transferred the results from the polling units electronically to the server.
Atiku is clearly playing games with our intelligence. His ploy is simple. Tell a lie, make it as confusing as possible, a lie around technology always works best .
But this is so irritating because it is so obviously a lie.
In the petition before the tribunal, he says that the results on the INEC server showed that in Lagos State he had 1.1 million votes! and Buhari had 1.3 million votes. I voted in Lagos, the entire Nigerian Press and all the social media operate in Lagos. Minute by minute they posted the results on line. The total votes by all the media for both Buhari, Atiku and all other candidates was 1.05 million votes. It seems only Atiku had a record of this fantastic result!
I am a lawyer, I am not a SAN like his lawyers but the Electoral Act makes no provision whatsoever for transmission of election results electronically. The relevant provision clearly prescribes a process of filling and verifying forms at every stage from local government collation to State collation and then the National collation centre at Abuja. Section 73. Of the Electoral Act says , “Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Commission shall issue and publish, in the Gazette, guidelines for the elections which shall make provisions, among other things, for the step by step recording of the poll in the electoral forms as may be prescribed beginning from the polling unit to the last collation centre for the ward or constituency where the result of the election shall be declared’.
And section 74. says, ‘Every Result Form completed at the Ward, Local Government, State and National levels in accordance with the provision of this Act or any guidelines issued by the Commission shall be stamped, signed and countersigned by the relevant officers and polling agents at those levels and copies given to the police officers and the polling agents, where available.’
So the law expects that the results would be collated manually, entered and signed on forms provided by law. In any event, the Card reader is only configured to verify the authenticity of PVCs not to collate and transmit results. Those who designed the process may have known that electronic transmission would result in these types of scams, a candidate who claims he accessed the INEC server! If he could access it he could tamper with the figures. Thank God that we have hard copies of all the results and the law only allows proof by hard copies.
The same Atiku argues in his petition that Card readers were not used in many States. Yet his ‘server results’ show results from every State except Rivers State. In every State there is a total number of accredited voters and scores for both Buhari and himself. How were the results electronically transmitted in States where Card Readers were allegedly not used?
It is incredible that a man who wants to lead this nation sees nothing wrong in barefaced deceit and astonishing lies.
This is just so insulting!Why do we have these sorts of characters inflicted on us?
Faith Edet Bassey, a legal practitioner writes from Abuja
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3 Comments
Jasper, could you please respond as an educated being? The writer outlined his arguments ,with facts in the public domain,if u had different facts or figures as stated in the public space,you can project it rather than insulting someone whose shoe you may not be able to clean in real life simply because you have data-its called fallacy.
I agree you hate Buhari,and it seems you are so bitter enough or pretending to be so bitter enough to not reason people’s argument but just plain abusing them.
Buhari himself knows he didn’t win the election. Buhari’s government has failed Nigerians all round. HARDSHIP, LACK AND SUFFERING all over Nigeria without any solution. So how could he possibly have won the election under the circumstances.
What a write up by a prejudiced lawyer. What a compromised lawyer. What a Mr dishonorable. What an attempt at getting government’s patronage.
What an enemy of the state. What a low life. Nonsense.
The pdp is definitely singing it’s last song and dancing it’s last dance on this Atiku’s matter. They both ramble and said nothing tangible.
1. It is the APC that took a petition to court by Atiku. Common sense and logic demand that, he who alleges should proof.
2. The burden to proof is on the shoulders of the pdp, to proof Atiku won the elections and not on the APC. .
3. The APC could only rely on the results officially declared by Inec polling unit by polling unit and the collated results from ward to LGA to state and National collation centre Abuja. That is the only proof the APC has to show..
3. Issues of eligibility is not a trivial matter but a constitutional requirement for any candidates to contest elections at any levels in Nigeria. Even in our traditional common laws and customs. It is not every and any indigene Who could become a traditional ruler.
The constitution spells out who qualifies to become the president of Nigeria. It was not out of trivialities that, the crafters of the constitution inserted Nigerian by birth as a requirement, and October 1st, 1960 as the qualifying date.
The APC has nothing to proof on Atiku server results which Inec described as manufactured for the purpose of the election tribunal.
If server was key and material to our electoral laws and processes, server officers would have been returning officers. Election results would have been downloaded from a server and winners declared.
Since the APC relied on the official results declared at polling units, that is what they can defend at the tribunal, not what was manufactured.
The size of one’s bank account could be a factor to contest and win pdp presidential primaries. But to contest for presidential election in Nigeria the candidates shall be a Nigerian by birth.
That should be simple enough for the pdp to understand.
Was Obasanjo and Atiku not at ASO rock when killings were going in kaduna and plateau states. Was Obasanjo and Atiku but at ASO rock when state of emergency was declared in plateau state with a military administrator installed? Was Obasanjo and Atiku not at ASO rock when Bola ige was killed in his bedroom, Harry Marshall and several Nigerians killed?
Buhari deserve a holiday like any other Nigerian.