National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee of the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) Mr. Festus Okoye Esq. on Tuesday said it would be practically impossible to have over voting and other malpractices in the 2023 general elections if the political parties, voters and the civil society organisations are vigilant on election day.

“The electoral law has given political parties the power to nominate political agents to every polling unit in Nigeria. What that means is that if 18 political parties nominate their polling agents we are going to have 36 eyes and 36 ears watching what is going on in a polling unit in which case ,it will be next to impossibility for anything to go wrong except all of them connive. So while we are doing our best to maintain election integrity, they should also do their own”, he stressed.

The Spokesperson of the Electoral Umpire disclosed this during a PLAC Webinar said ;” so if everyone is watching, if all the polling agents are watching, the possibility of a foreign material entering the ballot box is remote.
“Over voting can only be prevented by human vigilance and vigilance of the voters, vigilance of the civil society organisations and vigilance of political party agents. That is the only way”.

Mr Okoye said the Commission has trained and retrained its technical support staff, Presiding Officers who are corps members at their orientation camps and “doing electronic stimulation with BVAS so that they can be comfortable with the BVAS”.

According to Mr. Okoye, for the 2023 general elections, Personal Voters Card (PVC) is mandatory. He explained that section 47(1) of the Electoral Act makes it mandatory that any individual who wants to vote shall go through verification and authentication before one is allowed to vote.

Speaking on preparations for the elections, he said apart from training of Technical support staff, ad hoc staff, it organised a mock accreditation on February 4,this year adding that ;”we used the mock accreditation to test the efficiency of the BVAS and we are satisfied that it was performing optimally”.

Like a good trained teacher, Mr. Okoye took participants through the step by step process on the day of the election.

Hear him;” when the Presiding Officer arrives on the day of election, he must show to everyone present,the empty ballot box and the empty ballot box must be shown to all present. If all the polling agents are watching,the possibility of a foreign material entering the ballot box is remote”.

He said after voting, the Presiding Officers are going to transmit the accreditation data and Form EC8A which is the polling unit result through INEC view Portal. “The Presiding Officers are also required under the law to carry Form EC8A which the Presiding Officer has signed and stamped and which political party agents have counter signed and which have also been given to political party agents and the security agents. He will carry it to Collation Centre.”

He said if there is a dispute relating to what has been brought manually and what has been electronically transmitted, Section 64(6) of the Electoral Act says the Collating Officer will use the transmitted result”.

On Collation of results, he said every political party is also expected to send an agent to the Collation centre. He said the Presiding Officers bring their results, enter it into the forms provided.

“It is open and transparent and uploaded in real time. People will be seeing what is going on. Everyone can see it. That is the power of technology and also the power of the type of transparency we have introduced”, he said.
Mr. Okoye said with all emphasis and conviction that a National Commissioner of the Commission cannot influence the voting or the result in a single polling unit because” this thing belongs to the people of Nigeria. We are returning sovereignty to the people of Nigeria.”.

Speaking on the margin of lead principle, Mr. Okoye explained that ;” if in a particular election, during the process of Collation, a particular candidate secures 100,000 votes and the next man following him secures 95,000 votes but while the result is being tabulated, it was discovered that there has been over voting in 10 polling units and in those 10 polling units the number of accredited voters was 7000, what the Commission will do is to to take that 7000 votes and add to the person who came second.

“He will definitely overtake the person with 100,000 votes in which case the law demands that we should go back and conduct election in those 10 units . But if the person who came first has 100,000 votes and the person who came second has 95,000 and there has been over voting in 10 polling units and in those polling units the number of accredited voters is just 3,000 to the person who has 95,000, the person will not the person who had 100,000. In that case ,we will declare the person who has 100,000 as the winner and we will not go back. ”

On logistics, Mr. Okoye said the Commission is on top of it. He explained that INEC signed MOU with the transport unions and the maritime union. Both unions he said would provide 100,000 vehicles and 4,000 boats stressing that the operators of the vehicles and boats would subscribe to oath of neutrality and would be profiled by the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).

He said INEC Management had met with critical institutions like the NNPCL, Chief Justice of Nigeria(CJN), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the National Security Adviser (NSA) stressing that; “we are confident that we can harness these critical agencies and ensure that only votes of Nigerians will determine who wins”.