BREAKING: 9 States Network Issue Not Valid Reason Against E-Transmission – Sowore

Omoyele Sowore is a human rights activist and politician. In this interview, he expresses displeasure over the action of the National Assembly concerning the passage of the Electoral Act, with the proviso. The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in 2023 general elections, also explains why insecurity hasn’t been tackled decisively by the government, among other issues.

JOY ANIGBOGU

brings the excerpts:

What can you say about the e-transmission of elections results in the Electoral Act as passed by the Senate?

What we heard was that provision wasn’t made for electronic transmission of election results. But most of us joined the protest for them to be very clear that electronic transfer of election results must be made mandatory just as the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAs) machines were able to take a shot of the results and transmit to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) portal. It may happen immediately where there’s network and it may happen whenever it finds network. But what’s most important is that the process would start immediately after the election is carried out and it would go to INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal where people can immediately view the results from the polling units across the country. But that wasn’t made mandatory by the senate according to what we know. What they did was to be clever by half by saying that wherever there’s no network to transmit, we’ll accept the hard copy. What that means is that they can go to court and say that e-transmission of election results is not mandatory and they would say there was no provision for it in the electoral act. They would go back to the process that they’ve been using that has made elections an incredible process. That’s why the people don’t trust the electoral process. By now, we should be doing what they do in India, where they have 900 million voters and they use electronic voting as their own way of expressing the wishes of the people. I don’t think you hear a lot of tribunals sitting in India over elections. We have nine million voters here, we should be able to go for electronic voting. Like I said, if we’re using electronic processes to send money to people and do other things that are confidential, why can’t people vote from their homes instead of going to polling booths and we end up electing people that we didn’t vote for.

The House of Reps approved electronic transmission of results to IReV with collation of results simultaneously, which contrasts with what the senate did, does this give credibility to the National Assembly and should we trust them?

Obviously we cannot trust them, even when the provisions are harmonised, it’ll still come through the final law that they’re going to pass. What I suspect, and I know them, they’re not worried about you or members of the public, they don’t want a situation where the judges are Armstrong by definitive words such as ‘shall’ or ‘must.’ The language of the Electoral Act must make electronic transmission of election results mandatory and wherever that is violated, you must be able to provide evidence or excuse and then the threshold must be such that it’s not done by those who want to rig elections. They don’t want to make e-transmission of election results mandatory and the excuse is that we don’t have a network in nine states. They can even shut down the network in the country, it doesn’t cost them anything to shut down the network. All these people are telling you that there’s no network in the country, but there’s nowhere that you cannot reach them in the country. BVAS can work with any kind of network and people have said that INEC should deploy wireless networks to these areas. Even in those places where they shut down the network deliberately in those years, terrorists were sending live content to Tik tok, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter. So the excuse is not tenable. They don’t want transparent elections because they know that if elections are credible, 90% of them would not make it to the National Assembly, and other positions too.

After voting, the next is manual collation and the electoral officer would write it in Form EC8A, and with BVAS, the picture of the form would be taken and it would be sent to IReV and they would send what is in the BVAS to the collation center, but with this new provision, how does it affect what has been on ground since IReV is a result viewing centre and cannot be used for collation?

At the protest, I said that even in the best of circumstances, IReV is a portal for viewing rigged or unrigged election results. But for those who are interested in the implementation, they said let’s see the results as soon as it has been collated so that nothing happens after we’ve gone to sleep because a lot of things happen overnight. That’s what people have been talking about. My preference is not even this, this is mandatory. Even where IReV is working 100%, you’re viewing a result that has been rigged or not and in circumstances where the election has been rigged, you’re only seeing elections that have been processed at the polling units and the people are saying ‘okay let’s have that’ and I support them. So, I felt if people have more faith in that, then we can move to another level. Why they don’t want this is because they don’t want the people to have a more transparent electioneering. They get involved with the old one and they’re not involved with what is progressive. The INEC Chairman, Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan, SAN, met with the political parties last year and he said that he was in India, where they asked him why he was wasting his time on BVAS. Probably Nigeria is the only country in the world that is using BVAS. Even if you Google it, it would take you to Nigeria. Indians told him that you can do electronic voting, what it means is that you put your NIN, it shows that you’re a registered voter and it shows you a ballot paper, digitally, you vote and it sends a copy to your email or WhatsApp, you can print it or send it to your phone number and you have a copy of who you vote for and you can show your evidence in seconds. The fear of some people is that it could be tampered with and I told them that you have a global system that is digitalised and you can improve on it. This idea of ballot papers has proven to be fraudulent. In places where people have low access to digital voting or network, you can do the normal voting and it would be easy to count. We can do that without using this outdated machine that is very expensive and very difficult to maintain. Apart from those linking up, a lot of these machines can be processed in advance and they can rig the outcome before you even get to the polling units. You need educated voters, a lot of Nigerians know how to use these devices, and they use them to write examinations, buy food, check their results and do other things. So, why are we still in the Stone Age in this manner? They want this to become a controversy so that you wouldn’t have time for any other thing. They’re also planning to do elections in November.

We saw new members joining the civil societies such as former members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), people that you’ve spoken against, how do you feel seeing them on your side during the protest at the National Assembly?

They’re politicians, and they would always be on the divide that favours them. We welcome them, they can do this for some time and after some time, they’ll move back to their comfort zones. Whenever theirinterest is affected, they know what to do and when it’s not affected, they mock those of us who protest that we waste our time. Former governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi even brought his son for the protest. We had other supporters of former president Muhammadu Buhari there. We welcome our new activists. I told my people that it’s good to see some of these politicians there. Most of us who do it on a daily basis tell us that it’s our destiny, but it’s good that they have come to see how it feels.

On National security, what do you think should happen for the government to be responsive enough, we see the efforts of the security agents, but these people still regroup, what would you have done to make Nigeria safer?

What has happened is a complete breakdown of the security apparatus of the country. It didn’t start today, it started when we made security a business and you add incompetence to corruption. We’re not fighting insecurity the way any country that is having serious security issues should fight it. Things that should be done by the police are being done by task forces and the police are in the background when this happens. They use hunters, vigilantes because the Nigeria Police is not being made to do their jobs or else they would have reduced insecurity by 90%. The movement of arms for terrorism and banditry would have been nipped in the bud by the police. When you talk about security, they remove police completely. They pay them peanuts, their barracks are not well taken care of, when they transfer them, they don’t pay them allowances and they don’t have life insurance. You now rely on the Nigerian Army, which is overstretched. They use unconventional methods too as they use bicycles and Keke Napep to fight terrorism, who use armored cars and heavy equipment. How do you fight insecurity with vehicles with open roofs? The country has lost a lot of territories to these people.

But as President, I would take security issue very seriously, that would push me to the war front, I wouldn’t go to the war front, but I would see my National Security Adviser every morning, I would see army generals every morning, I would talk to them on how to motivate them and I would want to see the equipment they’ve bought physically or virtually, I would make sure that all the security chiefs are competent. I would make use of younger and well-motivated people to handle the security of the country. When they see this, you’ll see that things will change. But this cannot be divorced from other insecurity. There has to be employment for young people, you have to provide education, invest in sports, healthcare and processes that are suitable for the people. If you don’t have empowerment, you don’t have schools, hospitals or roads that are safe for the people, then insecurity would not end. See more