E-Transmission: How manual option opens door to manipulation, rigging — Kenneth Okonkwo

•Says election should be cancelled where real-time fails

By Nnamdi Ojiego

Against the backdrop of an emergency legislative session that adopted a controversial provision allowing manual alternatives when electronic transmission fails, lawyer and African Democratic Congress (ADC) member, Kenneth Okonkwo argues that the move will weaken public confidence and threatens the integrity of elections.

In this interview, Okonkwo rejects any compromise that permits manual intervention in result transmission, insisting that only unconditional electronic upload from polling units can protect votes from alteration. Excerpts:

What do you make of what played out today at the emergency session of the Senate?

Well, what I saw today was treachery. It was deceit. It was 419, the way we know it in Nigeria, obtained by false pretense. First of all, Senator Munguno told Nigerians that they had to summon this session in order to listen to the yearnings of Nigerians, in order to take their will into consideration. What did they end up doing? They took their own will into consideration through the back door. What we have been saying is that we want unconditional electronic transmission of polling unit results to preserve the integrity of our results. Let me make it clear. We do not have anything like electronic collation of results. What we have is electronic preservation, storage, and transmission of the manually generated polling unit results in order to preserve the integrity of the results.

In other words, Nigerians have discovered that our problem is that in between polling unit and the collation center, a lot of abracadabra take place – that mutilates, that inflates, that fraudulently manipulates the polling unit results in order to give you not what the people voted, but what the counters of the elections would want. What the senators did was that they said, oh, we can now electronically transmit with proviso that when it is not possible to transmit, you will use the manual. That is the discretion we have been fighting for.

Is it not safer? Can you trust technology 100%?

No, it is dangerous. When it comes to this issue, I trust it 100%. Why am I saying so? INEC was the one who invented IREV portal. They have never complained for one day since they started using it in 2020 tthat technology failed them in uploading the result. Not one day. But let me tell you the funny thing. BVAS is the technological device that INEC uses to accredit voters and BVAS, by section 47, subsection 1 to 3, said you must accredit with BVAS and when BVAS is not working, what do you do? They didn’t say you should rely on the manual register of voters. They said you should cancel the election and reschedule it. And this is BVAS working throughout the day. Yet the consequence, if it is not working, is that you cancel the election.

The same BVAS is what they said they are going to use to upload the scanned copy of the form EC8A on the IREV portal. One transaction! And then you are telling us that if that one transaction does not go through, they should go back to the manual, no. That is legitimatizing the technical glitch which Yakubu Mohammed brought. Because what they are simply saying is that the proviso reads when there is technical glitch, in quotes, by INEC, because they are the ones who will tell you they don’t have network, then use the manual. That was exactly what happened in 2023. Amazon website services said there was no glitch. Nothing happened to their station. INEC said that there was glitch. And when you want to go to court, they will tell you, Pete, that Assaf should prove, even when you don’t have the document. Let me tell you what the Supreme Court said about the proviso. In the case of NDIC versus Ochem Enterprises Limited, 2004, 10 Nigeria Weekly Law Report, part 880, at page 107. The Supreme Court said the purpose of proviso in a statutory enactment is to qualify or cut down, or cut down the main clause in the statute preceding it. Remember what happened in the case of Abegunde and the Ondo State House of Assembly. The Supreme Court said that proviso means that, yes, if you defect from one party to the other, you lose your seat, provided that there is no division in the party. That is what the proviso does. The proviso destroys the main clause to the limit of whatever they say. And let me tell you, the opposition senators displayed a lot of timidity and unintelligence. And the ruling senators, as they know, displayed a lot of mischief and dubiousness. They are the people that will want us not to even believe what we are seeing. You will catch them rubbing the leg of a woman, and they will tell you it is AI. Even what we are seeing, those ruling (party) senators with their dubiousness, that is what they want to do to us.

The version of the House of Reps is different from the version of the Senate. Which one do you think we should proceed with?

The two versions should complete the intention of the Nigerian people. Which is just like it is written in Section 47, Subsection 3. It says where the card reader or any technological device deployed by INEC for the accreditation of voters fails to function, the election should be canceled. And rescheduled. How many times have we canceled any election because BVAS has not been working? Ninety-right per cent of the time, BVAS had worked. And whenever BVAS does not work, they replace it. When they talk about the network, you begin to see that this is outright mischief. We communicate on WhatsApp. At times, you send a message on WhatsApp and then it might not download because of network. Automatically, when the network comes, it downloads. So what is the reason they’re talking about? They simply want to sneak into that manual transmission so that they can manipulate and rig the election. The issue of transfer or no transfer or network or no network is no reason whatsoever.

But don’t you think that it is a middle point?

There is no middle point to meet because we are not doing electronic voting. We’re not doing electronic collation. We are simply saying preserve the manual. So that everybody will see the election from the polling unit so that you can’t go home to manipulate it. We remember what happened in Obioakpo. We remember what happened in Lagos. Every polling unit result was mutilated, and inflated. We saw it. It is still there on the internet and that’s why I’m saying that when they’re telling you about halfway, no, there’s nothing like that because we are not doing any electronic voting. We’re not doing electronic collation. What we are simply saying is when you finish that your manual, upload the scanned copy immediately before you have any chance to change it. Whenever you finish any collation, you transmit the collected result immediately to the collation system, to the IREV so that each level of collation will use the electronically preserved copy. That is what we have been fighting for.

Do you think they can override the version of the House of Reps?

No, they cannot. They are two different chambers. The House of Reps should go further to say that where it is not possible to transmit from the polling unit, that election should be cancelled. It is there in the accreditation which is more difficult. The uploading is just one single action.

But is it going to be fair for example, if you are successful in accreditation, successful in voting, why would you cancel the entire process because you cannot transmit the result electronically?

Because the reason you are doing accreditation and the reason you are doing voting is for the result. So if you do all those things to get a fraudulent result, what have you gained? You have actually emboldened the criminals. You have actually voted for the criminals. Let me tell you, the only problem we have in this country is fraudulent elections. On the day we have free, fair, credible elections in Nigeria, 20 years after that, we will become a superpower nation. Take my words for it. America is sustained today not because they don’t have bad men but because power lies with the people. And let me plead with Nigerians. They should not think this job is for the opposition, no. Democracy is not government of ADC. It’s not government of APC. It’s government of the people. Why I’m fighting for democracy is not because I’m in the opposition. I am fighting so that I will have the power to be able to determine who governs me so that my sons and children will grow up in Nigeria where they have the power to determine who governs them. So this is a fight for all Nigerians and we must come together whether you’re APC, PDP or ADC. What we are saying is power should belong to the people. Sovereignty belongs to the people from whom the government derives all its power. And it is only through election that they exercise that sovereignty. So Nigerians should know that this fight is for everybody because fraudulent elections produce fraudulent leaders. And everything will not work with fraudulent leaders. Nobody is fighting because he’s in the opposition. We are fighting for the freedom to determine who governs us.

In terms of a technological advancement, is it a fact that there are areas in this country that don’t have network?

Any elder that is telling you that he doesn’t have network is fraudulent. How then has INEC been transmitting all the results from IREV from his own village? As you know, I was a spokesperson, I was in the campaign team, and I was in the legal process. There’s no time INEC has told us that they couldn’t transmit any result from any part of Nigeria. And there are agents, there are companies that have assured Nigerians that they can produce the network. Are you telling me that an organization that took N400 billion from Nigerian people cannot make provision for such a serious thing to have network on that day? For a single transaction? And I told you that even if you don’t have network, you can upload and it will be uploaded whenever the network comes. So anybody telling you that he does not have network is fraudulent. I am saying it. And I’m standing by it.

QUOTE: Ninety-nine per cent of the time, BVAS had worked. And whenever BVAS does not work, they replace it. When they talk about the network, you begin to see that this is outright mischief

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