What Does INEC Truly Want to do with the BVAS?
POEM Raises Alarm...
In any sane society, the scene of any crime is strictly barricaded to aide forensic investigation like footprints as well as scrutinising any object of interest relating to any kind of link to solving the crime.
What the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC committed against the Nigerian people, who defied all odds to go all out and voted in the February 25 presidential election, is evidently a heinous crime. The scene of the crime is the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS machines that were allegedly shut out by INEC from transmitting the presidential election results in real time as stipulated by law captured in the 2022 Electoral Act signed into law by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
So, why would INEC go to court to seek legal permission to reconfigure BVAS? Was the same BVAS used in the Osun Gubernatorial Election reconfigured before the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal discovered the over-voting that led to the Tribunal's cancellation of many polling units results, resulting in bringing the same APC government back to power in the state (although the judgement has long been appealed against)?
Questions now -
1. Who is INEC working for? The APC, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu or the Nigerian people?
2. Why are they desperate to reconfigure the BVAS? To wipe away forensic evidence of a rigging process that even kids in kindergarten understood that took place during the last presidential election, or truly to be able to use the machines in the March 11 Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections?
3. If it is truly because of the March 11 elections, shouldn't the outcry surrounding the February 25 election enough to postpone the coming election, if need be, in order for the aggrieved candidates and parties that were evidently shortchanged by the Prof Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC to clearly explore all options of proving their case beyond all reasonable doubt?
4. Is the electoral body's evident panic in rushing to the courts to seek legal authority to tamper with the BVAS in name of 'reconfiguration' a result of the machines uploading real results as captured at polling units into the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) Portal that started happening about 48 hours after Professor Yakubu had declared someone President-elect with figures evidently conjured by mere imagination amid earlier inducements to favour a particular candidate and party?
Questions and even more arise in a system where INEC got a whooping N305bn from the Federal Government for the 2023 elections, out of which the electoral body budgeted N114.26bn for ICT-related expenses. How could all these gigantic figures go down the drain as indications appear to suggest that INEC wittingly thwarted the wishes of the people it was empowered to actualise?
In saner climes, many heads would roll!
Experts believe that the reason BVAS started uploading the real results alongside the fake ones INEC fed it is because INEC present ICT department could not technologically manipulate BVAS to override the real results while uploading fake figures. Evidently, the redeployment of the INEC's brain behind the BVAS, Engineer Chidi Nwafor from Director of INEC's ICT department to Administrative Secretary of the commission for Enugu State about six months to the election has a huge lot to do with the outcome of the hugely disputed election. Would Engr Nwafor have compromised by sabotaging his brainchild, BVAS? Apparently not!
Experts further suggest that whoever INEC are trying to engage to 'reconfigure' the machines is very much aware that he/she will be committing a serious crime against the state and therefore needed legal protection, hence INEC's desperate move to obtain one.
Now, the Judiciary comes into the scene.
The Appeal Court, Abuja in charge of the case is led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh. Will he lead his two other colleagues to deliver the right judgement, or is the chain link of subversion of the wishes of the people far longer than envisaged?
INEC, led by a university professor, has clearly failed the Nigerian people in the conduct of February 25 exercise. Will the Judiciary, touted as the last hope of the common man, equally suppress the wishes of the people in a government of the people for the people by the people?
The clock ticks as we approach judgement time today, Wednesday March 8 at the Appeal Court in Abuja. The Nigerian people, whose mandate was obviously stolen, are watching, and from every indication, they are not the fools the likes of Yakubu assumed they were.
This is POEM.
We will follow proceedings from this stage to all sessions at the Tribunal till judgement. We will avoid all acts of subjudice, but we will not shy away from standing firm in factual reporting.
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