For years they told us: Wait for INEC. Wait for the truck. Wait for the court to ask for the truck. And while we waited, they rewrote the figures in the night. That era is over.
When INEC Chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan warned last month that the authority to declare results rests exclusively with the Commission and urged Nigerians to resist the declaration of privately collated results, the ruling party’s foot soldiers clapped. They thought they had shut the door. They did not know the law had left the window open since 1983.
Peter Obi said it plainly on Arise TV, no whispering: We must make sure that at every polling unit, the votes are counted, the votes are recorded properly, the votes are transmitted properly. And we will have even a dual transmission so that as it’s going to the proper designated INEC portal, it’s also being transmitted where the people can see it. He clarified: All we are saying is that this time around, we will make sure that in every polling unit, we must have a system that transmits to our situation room the correct results.
That is not a parallel government. That is a parallel eye.
The ADC, through Bolaji Abdullahi, backed it: We will not trust the collation of results to INEC. We are also building the capacity to collate our results. And Pat Utomi, the Big Tent architect, gave it the philosophy of complex redundancy. He said: The idea is not for just that body that I was speaking for to do it, but to encourage complex redundancy of the process. Church groups, diaspora networks and civil society organisations were also being mobilised to photograph and simultaneously upload result sheets immediately after they were signed at polling units. Utomi called it co-opetition: Opposition can share resources – Body cams, live streaming from every polling booth, make it harder for electoral results to be manipulated.
That is what the platform Obidient Connect does. It does not seek to replace INEC. It seeks to make sure what INEC announces matches what the polling unit officer wrote on Form EC8A at 4pm in Warri, in Gusau, in Aba. This is IReV monitoring, not IReV substitution.
And then the law spoke through Agbakoba, aligning with what the books already said. Agbakoba told political parties to their faces: Stop being lazy. If you’re not ready to monitor the elections right across Nigeria, don’t go on the ballot. Or don’t complain.
He said parties already have everything they need under S. 62 of the Electoral Act, 2022 – polling agents who sign results. If you have 176,846 agents, you have 176,846 results. You don’t need to beg INEC in court for trucks of papers. You have the papers. He nailed the legal core: INEC’s results enjoy a presumption of regularity. But that presumption is rebuttable if a party shows up with its own intact records from the same source. If the party that has the equipment, and the wherewithal, and the heft to have its electoral records intact, presents it to the court, then the presumption of regularity that flows in favour of INEC is rebuttable.
And to bury the lie that publishing is declaring, he cited the 1984 judgment of Justice Cante Johnson in NUJ and Two Others v. IGP and Three Others, Suit No. M/191/83, where the court held that journalists have a right to publish results lawfully announced at polling units. FEDECO could declare, but it could not gag. He said: Already in 1984, Justice Cante Johnson decided exactly what I’m saying, that journalists have a right to publish results. If I’m standing at the polling unit, and the presiding officer reads the results. He has read it. I can broadcast it.
Then he gave us 1993 – the freest election we ever had. It was never declared. NEC was stopped. Yet every Nigerian knew Abiola won. How? Because people saw the results on the blackboard at the polling unit and projected. That projection is now history. No one was jailed for usurping NEC’s power, because reporting what you saw is not declaring. The anchor is not sentiment. It is M/191/83 and S. 62. If we could do it in 1993 with chalk, we can do it in 2027 with BVAS photos.
In America, CNN, AP, Fox, NBC do not wait for the Federal Election Commission to declare President. They use exit polls, precinct returns, statistical models. By 11pm on Election Night, they call Pennsylvania, they call Georgia. And based on that private collation, candidates concede. And their exit polls are even weaker than our evidence. America has secret ballots. We have signed EC8As posted at polling units and uploaded to IReV. If CNN can call America with a sample, we can verify Nigeria with the actual Form. What INEC calls privately collated results, America calls democracy.
To the Obidient-Kwankwasiyya movement, the Big Tent, the church watchers, the diaspora coders building Obidient Connect, the student who will stand at his polling unit with a power bank and phone: This is it. Agbakoba has shown us the law is on our side. Obi, Utomi and ADC have shown us the will is on our side. History from 1993 has shown us the precedent is on our side. America has shown us the practice is on our side.
Do not go on the ballot if you cannot monitor the ballot. And if you will monitor, then monitor completely. Photograph that EC8A. Upload it. Dual transmit it. Make INEC know it is being watched. As Agbakoba said: If INEC knows it’s being watched, it’ll be careful. Let them be careful for once.
We are not declaring. We are watching. And in 2027, watching will be the difference between freedom and fraud.
Gabriel N.Orji
