Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

OP-Unedited

OP-UNEDITED | Analysis of #KogiDecides Shows A Disturbing Pattern of Disenfranchisement

Demola Olarewaju

In my piece written on the Friday preceding yesterday’s election, I predicted an outright win for the incumbent Governor of Kogi State Gov. Idris Wada. This was not only a result of my affiliation with the PDP but mainly because of what I had seen on ground in three days spent in several places across the state. In the Osun elections, facts, figures and sentiments on ground all pointed to an outright victory for the incumbent Aregbesola and I called it as I saw it – a straight win for Rauf Aregbesola; I try not to let my sentiments outweigh what the figures say.

The caveat of the piece I wrote on #KogiDecides was that if all things were equal, Wada would win. All things were certainly not equal and INEC has a lot of explaining to do on the results from Kogi. In writing the piece on Friday, I relied heavily on certain voter sentiments and especially information from top politicians in both parties. As I stated therein, Wada was seen as the lesser of two evils (an usual conundrum with politics in Nigeria) and the sentiments were certainly in his favour even from the APC camp. What APC had done before the election was to try to paint a picture of overwhelming popularity for its candidate Abubakar Audu which was a far reflection from the sentiments on ground. For this piece though, sentiments cannot be my guide as it is what it is. We would rather look hard at the figures and decipher the clear patterns. Presented below is a table of the results as largely announced by INEC with the exception of Okene, Mopa-Muro and Kabba-Bunu LGAs which are supplied by @vanguardngrnews as announced on ground by INEC.

LGA APC PDP OTHERS ACCREDITED DISENFRANCHISED
Okehi 10,170 8,504 4,272 24,645 1,699
Mopamuro 3,888 4,195   8,859 776
Ogorimagongo 1,931 2,601 03 4,820 285
Ajaokuta 8,581 6,903 550 17,466 1,432
Adavi 15,636 11,902 1,318 30,993 2,137
Kogi 10,426 9,316 10 21,834 2,082
Ijumu 9,958 6,040 251 18,199 1,950
Yagba West 7,930 7,021 13 15,902 938
Yagba East 7,129 5,368 16 13,921 1,408
Idah 11,779 6,952 24 21,471 2,716
Okene 14,786 15,968   33,703 2,949
Omala 9,228 10,517 17 22,545 2,783
Ofu 16,800 10,997 20 32,311 4,494
Ankpa 22,983 14,731 54 45,967 8,199
Olamabaro 13,227 8,202 13 24,429 2,987
Kabba-Bunu 9,659 7,768      
Igalamela-Odolu 9,003 8,683 29 20,953 3,238
Bassa 11,815 9,258 39 24,663 3,551
Lokoja 13,517 12,414 376 30,746 4,439
Dekina 20,994 21,602 98 52,344 9,650
Ibaji 11,427 10,572 31 24,817 2,787
  240,867 199,514   490,588 60,500
           

What these figures show is that about 60,500 people left their homely morning duties, came out of their homes on election morning with the intent to vote, queued in the morning sun with PVC or TVC in hand, brazed the odds of card-readers not reading their fingerprints, filled an incident form which allowed them to vote and simply went back home and forgot to return to vote. I do not for one moment believe they forgot to come back and vote or that the afternoon sun proved too hot and therefore discouraging for them to return – this number is totally unprecedented in any election conducted so far by INEC in 2015. The difference between registered voters and accredited voters is usually high across the country but from every data available from INEC, no election has produced anything higher than a 5% reduction in the number of accredited voters and eventual voters. In this election, the percentage difference is about 12.3% – a whopping 60,500 voters.

And that number is crucial because it could have made a difference on the side of the PDP.

Alahaji Lamidi Adedibu once boasted that he knew over 70 methods of rigging and one major one was to decrease the number of votes scored by an opponent in his stronghold while not inflating one’s own. How the incumbent Gov. Wada’s home Local Government recorded the highest number of accredited voters who did not return to vote (9,650) is becoming obvious. A further 17,454 could not vote due to cancellation occasioned by violence or insecurity. The law makes it clear that any area where there is violence, the results are automatically cancelled and this happened mainly in Wada’s stronghold.

Rigging has gone beyond Adedibu’s methodology – it is now scientific. With the advent of forensic review of ballot papers at Tribunals now, the way to rig is no longer by obtaining blank ballot papers and thumbprinting them (a single unique thumbprint on a thousand ballot papers is an obvious sign of rigging). What is done now instead is to wait till voters have duly voted and then destroy as many of the opponent’s ballot papers as needed to secure a marginal victory. So if PDP has 15,000 votes to APC’s 12,000 votes for instance, all anyone with the intent to rig for APC has to do is to destroy 4,000 PDP thumbprinted ballot papers, leave the results as 11,000 for PDP and 12,000 for APC while claiming that 4,000 accredited voters did not show up to vote after all.

Apart from the obvious uselessness of accreditation before voting, these results call for more study by the PDP and it is definitely a case for the Tribunal.

Demola Olarewaju is a political analyst and strategist who tweets from @DemolaRewaju

 

 

 

__________ 

Inspired by Steve Biko’s ‘I Write What I Like‘, OP-UNEDITED is the citizen opinion segment of SIGNAL. All opinions posted on the OP-UNEDITED page are unedited and the raw opinions of the writers.

Do you have an opinion on any topic whatsoever and you want it published to reach a wide audience? Send it to us at signalareport@signalng.com

Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng 

Copyright 2015 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Advertisement

Related

News

26 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, loyal to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, have dumped...

News

As the date for the off-cycle gubernatorial election in Imo, Kogi and Bayelsa draws closer, many Nigerians are increasingly doubtful that the electoral empire...

News

On Tuesday, the All Progressives Congress reprimanded PDP and Atiku Abubakar for attempting to obtain President Bola Tinubu’s academic records from Chicago State University. Bala...

News

Ministerial portfolios were revealed on Wednesday by president Bola Tinubu. Nyesom Wike, a former governor of Rivers State, was chosen by Tinubu as the...

Copyright ©