It is no exaggeration to say that the year 2018 represented the high point in activities that laid the foundations of the collapse of citadels of poor governance, indifference, insensitivity and unprecedented plunder that were the administrations in most states of the Nigerian federation.
Author: Editor
My big story this week is that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has reversed itself, saying that there is no winner in the February 25 National Assembly elections in Doguwa and Tudun Wada federal constituency of Kano State. It would be recalled that INEC had earlier announced Hon. Alhassan Doguwa, incumbent Member representing the federal constituency and Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, who contested on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform, as winner of the election. After reviewing the facts of the matter, INEC on Tuesday, removed Doguwa’s name from the list of Reps-elect, attributing the development to irregularities in the electoral exercise. The commission had said he was declared winner of the election by the Returning Officer under duress.
The 2023 governorship race in most states feels like the most intense and controversial election to have ever been seen. And there’s plenty of action in races down ballot, too.
I was personally indifferent to, and invested no emotions in, the outcome of last Saturday’s election because it was as predictable as tomorrow’s date. The PDP that faced off APC in 2019 was fractured into four feuding, mutually annihilating factions to fight APC in 2023, which has remained more or less unchanged. What could go wrong with that?
This is a corollary to my article of 16th February 2023. The continuation of this article was disrupted by the topical issues of cashless policy implantation and the 2023 presidential election. Now, I am back to the topic. The enormity of food security issues in Africa is a major concern to both people of Africa and the entire world. It is pertinent to bring out major food insecurity indicators that comprehensively measured food security in the world. There are two major indicators “Prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) and Food insecurity experience scale (FIES)” for measuring the “Prevalence of severe food insecurity”. While the average PoU of North America and the European Union from the year 2000 to 2016 was 2.5 percent of their population, Africa recorded 24.3 percent in the year 2000, which reduced to 17.8 percent in 2013 and then increased to 20.1 percent in 2016. As of 2021, the prevalence of undernourishment in Africa stood at 20.2 percent. The levels of food insecurity and hunger on the continent overall increased from 2014 onwards.
Jana Hocking says she thought everyone was aware of the ‘shocking’ rule by now: ‘It’s not cheating, get with the times’ veryone should be dating multiple people You no longer need to share that they are not the ‘only one’ ‘You get to trial who you have the best chemistry with’ Here I was plodding though life thinking everyone was aware of the one big change in the dating game that’s not often spoken about but very widely accepted. So imagine my surprise when I’m out to dinner with my family for my mum’s birthday and she looks shocked, appalled…
I am not speaking of, nor would I dwell on, how he brought back the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the brink of disintegration two years ago. No, everyone knows that. Everybody is aware of how he stabilised the party and made it grow in numbers. He attracted the grassroots, who trooped into the party in numbers as well as the high and mighty who could make things happen.
The third truth about the February 23 election is that the leadership of INEC is guilty as charged for eroding the credibility of the election by proposing an integrity test for the elections – INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and failing to deliver on it. The main technology innovation, BVAS, would ensure that only those eligible to vote participate and additional “votes” cannot be added subsequently. Recalling the 2019 debates, there cannot be fabricated votes subtracted or added by any INEC server. At the end of voting in each polling unit, the results would be counted in the presence of voters and written into the poster EC 60E which will be posted on the wall. It is this result that was to be captured through a scan and sent through BVAS directly to the INEC viewing portal that all citizens and voters can see live. This transparency means everyone will be seeing the results as they come in and citizens, candidates and parties can cross check that the results on the portal reflect what was compiled at the polling unit. Citizens would have therefore all participated in confirming that the portal results replicate what was counted at the polling units. The IReV component of the integrity test failed and therefore the credibility of the election was lost using the definition of the integrity test crafted by INEC itself. This failure for me is really catastrophic because it created the basis for loss of confidence of citizens in INEC and its processes.
No one doubts the fact that the country today falls short of infrastructural development despite the unprecedented turn around on revenue generation and collection courtesy of the country’s Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS under the leadership of its Executive Chairman, Muhammad Mamman Nami.
There is no doubt that INEC is under a statutory obligation to transmit election results electronically. The starting point of the argument is section 38 of the Electoral Act 2022. That section which deals with the transmission of result at the polling units is crucial and it imposes a statutory obligations on the part of INEC to upload polling units results on its portal.