Dear President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, distinguished members of the National Assembly and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Recall, INEC in its effort to improve the value of our electoral system, announced the re-opening of voters’ register by first quarter of 2025. Also, recall the recent address by President Tinubu to the ECOWAS Heads of State to emulate Ghana’s election conducted recently, because of its free, fair and transparent nature. By implication the president acknowledged that our electoral process needs improvement. Nigeria can do better than Ghana considering the potentials and intellectual capacity that we have.
Mr. President Sir, our knowledge about you is that you are a real democrat, a champion and fighter for democratic governance. Your coming to power at this material time was a divine arrangement. We see you as a round peg in a round hole. As a leader and a lover of democratic rule, Nigerians are looking up to you to clean our electoral system and block the loopholes that create rooms for rigging and other forms of electoral frauds and malpractices. Nigerians are hoping that 2027 elections will be better than that of Ghana, which is a true reflection of the will of the electorate as you told African Heads of State to emulate.
Your Excellency sir, members of the National Assembly and INEC, in line with your laudable idea, thinking and renewed hope agenda of rebuilding the confidence of the electorate on INEC and our electoral system to be credible and acceptable again, in my understanding, the task of rebuilding Nigeria is a collective responsibility. Therefore, I, Elder Ali Akpandam, former governorship aspirant and deputy governorship candidate of ACN in 2007 election in Nasarawa state, wish to call on INEC and other sister agencies concerned not to just re-open registration of voters for multiple invalid figures for registration sake, but to totally overhaul and clean up the voters’ registers.
The efforts by INEC to decongest polling units in 2023 election by extending or opening more polling units all over the country was more or less awarding or allocating of unbelievable figures to some polling units, wards, LGAs or states as the case may be. The figures are not real and cannot be verified, justified and accepted.
In 2023 general elections in Lafia local government area, for instance, in some polling units, you would find over and above 1,000 registered voters, whereas accredited voters would just be between 100 and 300. How do you justify the authenticity of such figures?
Sir, despite these humongous figures where in some electoral wards you would find voters’ registration of 1468, 1000, 900, 800, 700, 600 but in most cases their accreditation is in range of 100, 150, 200, or at most 300. In some cases the figures were 100, 80, 70, 50, 30, and 15 registered voters but the actual accreditation were just 50, 25, 20, 16, 7, 6, respectively.
Sir, with the above examples, many conscienceless politicians both from executive and legislative arms who smuggled their way into power, used INEC to declare them the winners with such humongous figures regardless of accredited number of voters and asked whoever that did not accept the fraudulent outcome to go to court.
What I am presenting is not to undermine INEC’s efforts, or just criticising them. It is a statement of fact and verifiable analysis. I have taken my time to make general survey/analysis of the country’s voters’ register, and I have come to understand that the recent registration of voters was just a mere allocation of figures. Therefore, if we must get it right like Ghana, then INEC will have to restart all over to verify the authentic registered voters, by cleaning up the register.
Again, the purpose of this letter is not to undermine, accuse, criticise, argue or join issues with anybody but to present facts and figures concerning our electoral system. How can one justify 36 polling units in the same electoral ward of Ciroma of having equal figures of 750 registered voters? Similarly, how can one equally justify 750 equal number of registered voters in 16 poling units of Gayam Ward? In addition, the same figure appear multiple times in other five different electoral wards of Akurba, Makama, Shabu/Kwandere, Wakwa and Zanwa. The above-mentioned wards are just a few illustrations of many instances in Nasarawa state and Nigeria as whole in most cases in 2023 elections, and that is the purpose of calling on INEC to do the needful by cleaning up the voters’ register.
As part of President Tinubu’s renewed hope agenda, and if we must go the Ghana way as Mr President said, then INEC must clean up the voters’ registers without fear or favour.
I pray that the authority concerned will examine our post-mortem made by citing Nasarawa and Lafia LGA in particular as a case study with the view to cleaning up the voters’ registers for accuracy, efficiency, transparency and honesty. I believe this will remove the fictitious names that give room for gullible politicians and people with no integrity to manipulate and rig elections.
This process will also build the confidence of the electorate on INEC and the electoral system where the integrity and popular candidates of the masses alone will win elections. It will also build confidence, trust and integrity for Nigerians and the international community on Nigerians.
Furthermore, it will drastically reduce the number of knavish polling units that the government usually spends huge amounts of resources such as materials and allowances on ad hoc staff.
Finally, I wish to call on fellow Nigerians who are interested and love democratic governance, good governance advocates, and transparency, anti-corruption agencies, the Institute of Democratic Studies to rise in defence of our hard-earned democracy. I urge you to devote your time to x-ray the number of registered voters of wards to confirm these claims and join me in exposing the cankerworm bedeviling our political space.
I also call on the International community such as Yiaga Africa, ECOWAS, Democracy Without Borders, Transparency International, human rights organisations and other international activists to come to our aid.
Hon. Ali A. Akpandam,
Former Executive Chairman, Lafia LG, governorship aspirant and ACN deputy governorship candidate in the 2007 general elections in Nasarawa state.