It has been described as shameful that in modern day Nigeria, manual collation of election results has been ruled to supersede electronic transmission of such results.
An Abian politician and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Etigwe Uwa stated this in a radio programme in Umuahia, Open Parliament, adding that benevolent spirits put the politicians in the National Assembly to sleep when the 2022 Electoral Act amendment was passed into law.
Etigwe Uwa SAN who dissected the verdict the Supreme Court on the February 26 Presidential Election in Nigeria, the use of IREV, manual collation of results, the powers invested on INEC by the Electoral Act to determine mode of transmission of election results and the much talked about 25% FCT status, however put the Nigeria Supreme Court in a faultless position following the Court’s rulings on the matter recently.
Uwa noted, “There is a deeper problem that I see. What happened in 2022 when the electoral act was passed was as if some benevolent spirits put the politicians in the national Assembly to sleep and quite a lot of them passed that the electoral act. There were some provisions that they (National Assembly members) didn’t think about very well. That was why, immediately it was passed, people started trying to see if they could change it and all of that”.
On the issue of the status of Abuja in an election of a president, he said “The issue is not as to whether the FCT is a state in every sense of the word, including having a governor. The issue is to construe that provision of the constitution which says that for a candidate for an election for the office of the president, he will be deemed to be elected if he has a majority of votes cast at the election and he has not less than one-quarter (1/4) of the votes cast at the election in each of at least 2/3 of the states in the federation and the FCT, Abuja.
“I think that the strict construction of this thing means that 25% is necessary for Abuja. When they said “and the FCT”, that is usually construed disjunctively and that disjunctive construction means that it is separate from the first segment. So, it means in my view that the FCT is treated separately. If you treat them as one class, that means we have 37 states and therefore 2/3 must be scored in that 37. That is the way they construed it. I don’t think it is such a violent departure from the constitution. So, I don’t think that we can crucify the Supreme Court.
On the issue of IREV as settled by the Supreme Court which held that the failure of INEC to electronically transmit the election result via the IREV through its portal does not affect the collation and that the Electoral Act empowers INEC to determine the mode of transmission of election results, the legal luminary said, “I think that the Supreme Court could have used its power as a last court and adopting a purposive interpretation, adopting the mischief rule of interpretation of statute”.
According to him, the electoral act, 2022 was seeking to cure a mischief of “snatching ballot boxes, stuffing ballot boxes, writing results, writing fresh results and then, announcing those results”, noting further, “But if you have electronic transmission at all the polling units, and if you did that, there is a way of crosschecking the veracity of anything else you go and write and bring and we know that there is so much corruption in our electoral system. So, to say that IREV is just for public viewing, why did we spend all that money building that system?
“I think that decision takes us back and I think that we, who are in the justice delivery system, whether we are lawyers or judges, we need to realize that justice is the underpinning of a functional society. Once there is no justice, there will be discontent. Discontent may not lead to problems in the short run, but in the long run, over several years, and decades of discontent, something is bound to happen that might affect the country.
According to him, “the Supreme Court is the final arbiter not because it is infallible, but is infallible because it is final. When the Supreme Court has said so, that is the law as it is today. That is the position except they overrule themselves or the electoral act is amended”.
He therefore opined that the electoral should be subjected to further refinement, stating, “We should change the law. Nigeria should not despair. Countries that have exited the kind of situations that we are in, it didn’t take them one day”.
However, he observed that the electoral act 2022 is a great improvement, stating, “Even if said that manual collation supersedes electronic transmission, there is something the politicians cannot do. You cannot write an election result that is more than the number of electronically accredited voters. You must use BVAS. It is a must.
“Again, if you are saying that the manual thing supersedes, remember, in the electoral act, INEC has the power to review an election results within seven days. So, it is a shame that it has been decided that manual collation supersedes electronic. It is a big shame, but we shouldn’t despair”.
In Abia state he said, “I don’t think that Abians should really worry about this decision”, stating that the famous Obingwa cases of over-voting and where the result “is fantastically and phenomenally higher”, BVAS accreditation system will take care of it.
He advised politicians, “it is in the enlightened self-interest of every politician for the system to work well. If the system doesn’t work well, you can get away with it today, in four years, in eight years, but anybody who is a student of history understands that if there is a lot of discontents, people will keep bottling it up. It will get to a point where there might be an implosive tremble. If it happens, it will consume a lot of people. The unfortunate thing is, when those kinds of things happen, they affect both those who are responsible for those situations and other innocent people who are doing their things well. If we want a country that works, we should realize that even if we are in power, one day, we are going to leave the world, one day, we are going to leave power. We should straight systems that work for the country, the state and whatever form of government we want”
