Trending videos on Mahmood Yakubu

Forum 1 year ago

Trending videos on Mahmood Yakubu

Nigerians have not stopped lashing at the Independent National Electoral commission, INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu for giving assurances again that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, will run optimally during the governorship and state assembly elections.

And to buttress their position during the week, social media users dug up various videos documenting occasions where Prof. Yakubu gave similar assurances yet, failed to use BVAS to transmit the presidential results directly from polling units.

During the week also, an appeal court granted INEC order to allow it reconfigure the BVAS for the forthcoming governorship and state assembly elections now rescheduled for March 18th. This as well, has elicited mixed reactions from Nigerians. Many aver that it was all a ploy to erase evidences that may confirm the inconsistencies that dented the February 25th elections contrary to INEC’s excuse of technical glitches.

More than before, the move to reconfigure the BVAS has raised questions about the integrity of that election.

Reacting during an Arise TV programme, Rufai Oseni faulted INEC chairman for failing to keep his promises, adding that his coming out to say there were flaws during the presidential elections does not make sense. “It was an agreement, he went to Chatham House to say it; he said it everywhere in the world. Why are you now telling us all of this? You have come out to say the process was flawed.

”A lot of people told you that if you do not have confidence in the process and some of the things that were coming in, why don’t you delay announcement of results to get every factor right?”

Perhaps, fed up with same old story about INEC’s underperformance during every election year, a twitter user @Nigerian Citizen wrote, “I think the constitution should be amended for @inecnigeria. I think the position of INEC chairman should not be an appointment by the executive but should be elective position to be elected by Nigerians, it will help strengthen its independence.”

Reacting to the tweet, Oseni said, “I do not think you need to elect the INEC chairman; the problem is the strength of the institutions. The question is, if the constitution says it’s the commission that will review, till date, are we saying that the commission which is also filled with other people in INEC, has not been able to review what happened in the election and come up with a report; even as to what happened to the BVAS machine or the IReV- the technical glitch itself?

“It is the strength of the institution and, Nigerians should begin to look at who becomes the REC in INEC who grows up the ladder. If we get INEC right as a strong institution, you won’t care who the head of INEC is.”

Feeling very disappointed with the whole situation, Ojy Okpe who anchored the session said that reasons for the INEC glitches remain the biggest issue. At this juncture, Okpe called up videos trending on social media, showing how BVAS Machine and INEC’s result sheets were compromised during the February 25th elections. The first video showed Rivers State, where INEC officials found election result sheets in the bush and imagined where INEC got the result it announced from that polling unit. Also, another INEC official at a polling unit in Abia state exposed another fraud allegedly committed by INEC. She said the National Assembly and House of Representative results were successfully transmitted with the BVAS but all attempts to do same for the presidential results failed. The officer said she used different network service but still failed to transmit the results. She revealed further that it was same for other INEC officials but they covered up by uploading the results offline so that voters will free them to go thinking results had been uploaded to INEC portal.

After considering content of the videos as well as INEC accepting that the process was flawed, Oseni questioned why INEC had to go to court to seek order to reconfigure its BVAS in readiness for the next election. “Is it not the same register that will be used; is it that there must be upgrade, we don’t understand what is happening. Is it not just one accreditation that happens and you give people three ballot papers, are the polling units changing? “INEC should tell us why out of 176,000 polling units, nine days after election, on the IReV portal it’s still 162,000? This means the elections have not been concluded if all the polling units have not been uploaded. And if there’s a shortfall, are they able to tell us the reason for the shortfall?” Joining the conversation, Dr Reuben Abati asked, “Should anybody be surprised that Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has been very good at talking?” According to him, “What INEC has done is a very good illustration of the fact that talk is cheap. And in Nigeria, whether its election or security or the economy or any aspect of our lives, our leaders are victims of that aphorism that talk is cheap. “They say things they don’t mean; they assure you, assure you; we are always being assured every day. These assurances are never backed by evidences or action.”

Dr Abati further described the position of INEC chairman as a graveyard where reputations are buried. “INEC chairman from what history has shown us, is a graveyard of reputations and Prof Mahmood Yakubu may well discover that his reputation may not recover from INEC exercise because he continues to tell Nigerians that those glitches were unforeseeable. What kind of talk is that? “The explanation given by Festus Okoye was that, these technical glitches occurred because we have moved from all cycle election to a major general election. Common sense tells anybody that those glitches were foreseeable. “Immediately after the February 25th election, we were told that engineers were working on it. This is nine days after, those engineers, are they importing them from outer space to work on the so called glitches? Nine days after, that is when INEC went to court to seek the leave of court to reconfigure the BVAS. Well, talk is cheap,” he stated.

Precisely on Wednesday, the court granted INEC the order to reconfigure the BVAS machine ahead of the governorship election, only for INEC to postpone the election by one week. Many Nigerians think that’s a scam and thus, unacceptable.

On this note, Oseni suggested that there was need for “EFCC to investigate INEC project that brought about the BVAS”, adding that “Something is not adding up.” He noted that for the amount of money spent, we shouldn’t be having this process of wanting to reconfigure the machine before it could be used for the next election. “Who were those that brought the BVAS in the first place? Who are those that did the software backend work? Something is not adding up. I don’t think INEC should reconfigure the BVAS because it will be tampering with what is there,” he said.