OPINION: The senate coup against Nigerians

From Suyi Ayodele

Chief Whip Senator Monguno, moved the motion to sustain the old Electoral Act; Deputy Senate President, Senator Barau Jibrin, hurriedly seconded it. The Senate Leader, the Villa lickspittle from Ekiti, Opeyemi Bamidele, was salivating! Senator Abaribe raised his hands to alert his colleagues who were chatting and not concentrating. The Elésin Oba, (Remember the Abóbakú in Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman”), Senator Godswill Akpabio, smartly hit the gavel!! Coup hatched, executed against the Electoral Transmission real time.

The above was sent to me by a senior journalist who witnessed the putsch on the floor of the Senate last week.

If the Electoral Act 2022 (Repeal and Re-enactment) Amendment Bill 2026, passed by the Godswill Akpabio-led senate is allowed to be the guiding laws and principles for the 2027 general elections, Nigerians can kiss democracy goodbye. With the new bill as passed by the senate, everything called credibility, fairness, decency and moral, is gone and gone forever!

With what the Senate did last week, it is true that elections are not rigged on the day of balloting. No. The simple analogy is that the Nigerian Senate, with the electoral bill passed, has rigged the forthcoming election for the incumbents – president, governors, senators, House of Representatives members and any other person in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), seeking election or re-election in 2027 and the years to come.

I wished I could find a better way to describe the action of the Senate. My frustration at describing the open electoral murder committed on the floor of the Red Chamber was, however, mitigated by the response of the senior journalist above in a chat we had over the matter.

He sent me a 48-second video. It is an edited video of last week Wednesday’s proceedings on the floor of the Senate. The discussion was on the controversial electoral bill. Underneath the video, he wrote: “The 3 (three) coup plotters against democracy.” Their names?” I asked. Then he responded.

Nothing could be more apt. His response in the opening paragraph is the best I have had over the removal of “real-time” electronic transmission of election results by Akpabio and his co-conspirators against free and fair elections in Nigeria. It is sad; rather unfortunate that we have a National Assembly populated by representatives who would openly shortchange the destiny of the people on the altar of political desperation!

Here is the Clause 60 (3) of the bill that Akpabio killed with his gavel: “The Presiding Officer shall electronically transmit the results from each polling unit to IREV portal in real time and such transmission shall be done after the prescribed Form EC8A has been signed and stamped by the Presiding Officer and or countersigned by the candidates or polling agents available at the polling unit.”

The Clause is simple. Elections shall hold, with voting taking place. The ballots will be sorted. Each participating political party shall have a party agent present at the voting unit. The ballots will be counted. The results of the votes scored by each political party shall be announced openly by the Presiding officer. The Presiding Officer shall proceed to enter the results on Form EC8A, that is, the result sheet.

He or she shall sign the Form EC8A. He or she shall also stamp the form. All the party agents shall sign thereafter. Then, the Presiding Officer shall snapshot the Form EC8A and shall upload it to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) IReV (INEC Election results Viewing Portal). From the IReV portal, any human being can view the results.

The implications of an all-time electronic transmission of election results are too lofty. One, the controversy over result swapping is eliminated. Two, from the comfort of our homes, Nigerians can collate the results of any election, get the result and wait for INEC to officially announce the winner. Again, the idea of political thugs or any undesirable element attacking INEC officials on their way to the physical collation centre, to hijack the result, is eliminated.

More importantly, if there is any controversy, all that is needed is a visit to the IReV portal to ascertain the accurate figure entered. And should there be any litigation, the IReV portal comes handy. So, ask me: what are Akpabio and his gang of electoral murderers afraid of? What can be more honourable than Clause 60 (3)?

Instead, Akpabio’s senate insisted that the existing provision of the 2022 Electoral Act, which stipulates that “The Presiding Officer shall transfer the results, including the total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot, in a manner as prescribed by the Commission”, should stand!

Before you shout perfidy, you need to hear this. In addition to rejecting the all-time electronic transmission of results, Akpabio also rejected the 10-year jail term for PVC traders and opted for a two-year imprisonment term. In essence, the Senate is saying that a 10-year jail term is too harsh for anyone caught either selling or buying PVC. Such a felon, the senate voted, should be punished for just two years.

After watching the video and reading the footnote, I changed the topic. Nothing can be sadder than the Senate under Akpabio. I doubt if the Akwa Ibom State senator reads or hears what people say about him. Nigeria can never be more unfortunate than to have the present crop of leaders, especially at the executive and legislative levels.

I don’t know what Akpabio and his APC members are afraid of in a real-time ELECTRONIC transmission of election results. All the indices favour the party to win the 2027 general elections without any wùrùwúrú. In terms of spread, APC has 30 state governors out of 36 in its kitty. It has 75 of the 109 senators and in the House of Representatives, the party has over 231 members out of the total 360 members and it is still counting.

All the ministers in the Tinubu cabinet, including Nyesom Wike, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, are APC members without an exception. Forget Wike and his pretension to be a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Truth is that between Tinubu and Wike, nobody knows who is more APC! All board appointees are loyalists of the party and the President. Numerous board members fall over one another to impress the appointing authority, Tinubu. Many more people in the opposition have gotten their boarding passes, ready to board the APC ship.

What then is the party afraid of such that it cannot allow the results of the forthcoming elections to be transmitted immediately the ballot is counted and the results are announced? Why would a party that claims to have the most expansive nationwide spread be afraid of uploading election results immediately they are announced? Why should any nation of this age be afraid of immediate electronic transmission of election results? Whose interest are Akpabio and his hellions in the National Assembly serving?

Expectedly, the uproar against the Akpabio shenanigan has been all-consuming. From the opposition parties and men and women of good conscience, the opinions are on the negative side for the senate. More amusingly, in his response to the public condemnation of the senate under his watch, Akpabio quipped: “Why are people setting up panels on television stations and abusing senators? I leave them to God.”

Suddenly, in the face of public opprobrium, Akpabio knew that there is God! What a sacrilege! Who is Akpabio’s spiritual mentor? Why did his priest fail to tutor him that God is just, fair and good? Where was God when the Senate President inherited an electoral victory in an election he did not participate in?

With his antecedents either as a governor, minister and now Senate President, Nigerians should not be troubled about Akpabio. He could not have been otherwise; he could not have acted differently. He is not just a type character; he is also static and more A-heroic. Our focus should be on other seemingly honourable lawmakers who endorsed this open murder. How Senator Bamidele Opeyemi, the Senate Leader, with his antecedents in human rights struggles, would be a party to the amendment bill baffles any rational mind. But then, as someone suggested: “human rights and politics are two parallel lines.”

The biggest lesson of the senate’s action is that those in charge of affairs of our destiny have taken us for granted for too long. This is why the senate could summon the courage to pass a bill that outlaws an real-time electronic transmission of election results. Akpabio’s excuse that the entire country could be thrown into chaos if network or power failure affected the uploading of results remains as superficial as it is laughable!

His posturing that the senate “will not be intimidated” is an indication that he and his gang of weak-willed, leg-massaging legislators are already intimidated. And we shall continue to ‘intimidate’ them until they do the right thing. This matter, the Senate President should know, is like the proverbial thief who steals the only hen of the poor; he should know that he has stolen from a rabble-rouser (Eni gbé adìye òtòsì, ó gbé t’aláròyé).  We shall not rest; we shall not sleep. We will neither curse nor praise; but our mouths shall not be shut over the matter.

Nigerians have gotten to a level where they don’t care who wins or loses the 2027 election. They have heard stories of how President Tinubu has done so well and transformed Nigeria to an Eldorado. Good enough for the man in the Villa and his promoters. Methinks it is proper if such a wonderfully-performing President is allowed to go into the next election without the laws tilted in his favour.

Only elements like Akpabio are scared of a real-time electronic transmission of results. Only those who are beneficiaries of past electoral heists look forward to a future electoral robbery, and as such, make laws to promote electoral fraud. This is what the senate did last week. This is what Nigerians must understand. And more importantly, this is what all men and women of good conscience must resist and be counted on the side of that which is fair, just and of good moral standing.

As we await the review of the last Wednesday’s “Votes and Proceedings of the day’s sitting” on the amended electoral bill, we encourage other legislators to take time off their sybaritic fantasies as septuagenarian masseurs, by concentrating on the business of building faith in our electoral processes. All romance and no conscientious legislation make a senator a mere hedonist!