Nigerian Elections: Rigging starts from Registration

 INEC Chairman: Mahmood Yakubu

Until the Governorship Elections in IMO State, where the number of votes was more than the number of accredited voters, registration was a major focus for politicians in Nigeria.

The reason is simple. Nigeria's electoral process is strong on brute force and weak in process

and punishment. It is generally believed that in a dispute, the complainant may not always win.

However in Nigerian election it pays to be first declared a winner by any means possible. This is because, you are ushered into office when you are declared a winner. If eventually, your election is nullified, another election may be ordered while you remain in office. 

If however, you are to be replaced, there are no questions on how a wrong candidate is sworn into office. For the election to be nullified, an infraction must have been committed.

No questions are asked and no refund of salaries earned as a usurper or an impostor or a charlatan.

The question then is, why won't an attempt be always made towards getting into office by fair or foul means?

This explains why political parties do not joke with registration of voters. The first thing they do is that where the opposition is weak, the party in power ensures that registration is weak or non existent.

On the other hand, as many people as possible are made to register in their strongholds.

These are veritable preludes to riggging. The way it works is that all political parties are Godless in their strongholds.

The party agents are either lacking in motivation or non existent or over whelmed.

The security forces nay policemen are either disinterested or disillusioned or too scared to enforce the law or may have been compromised, one way or the other.

The bottom line is that this explains why they are unable to check the abuse of the electoral process.

On paper the electoral process is near perfect but the practitioners do not want the process to work. The first objection you hear is ' do you know what is happening elsewhere?

With that the stage is set for subverting a good system. The most important part of the election register is the number of registered voters. This is important because it points to the maximum number of votes that can be cast. That known, the next thing is to thumb print as many voting papers as possible.

Thus, the more the number of registered voters, the more the votes to be expected. Hence, the political parties do all in their power to ensure that they get as many people as possible to register in their strongholds and less people in their unpopular areas.

Without leaving anything to chance they follow up by ensuring that their strongholds are not starved of election materials while starving the opposition of election materials.

To achieve all these they rely on thugs and corrupt election personnel. As for the police, they deceive them with threats, blackmail and lucre.