Tomorrow the postponed governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections will finally be held. Some National Assembly elections which could not be concluded the last time will equally hold simultaneously in affected constituencies on Saturday. Nigerians have continued to express their disappointment over the conduct of officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, during the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections which results as announced by the electoral umpire have been rejected in various circles and are contested in the courts or election tribunals. Nigerians have dissipated a lot of emotions over the elections, but the disappointment of February 25 should not be sufficient enough to make Nigerian voters lose interest in the electoral process.

I say this for two reasons. The first reason is that the rot in the Nigerian electorate system is so much and has lasted for so long that a lot of efforts are required over time to clean the Aegean stable. The beneficiaries of the old order will not easily yield without fighting back. So, the victory of Nigerian masses is not going to be instant: It will come in stages and over time. However, it suffices to say that the February 25 effort was impactful and encouraging as it shook political strongholds to their respective marrows and upturned political permutations, while creating fresh political inroads to political enclaves hitherto unthreaded. The second reason is that any process of choosing leadership or electoral process in any given society or country is important because it is through it that the country can be made or marred.

The paradoxical status of the United Arab Emirates, a desert, and that of Nigeria, a land flowing with “milk and honey” as well as natural and human resources prove that leadership is critical to the development of any given society. In fact, Nigeria has everything except good leadership, while the United Arab Emirates has good leadership and nothing else. It is good leadership that has transformed the deserts into a global tourism and investment destination, while poor leadership has ruined Nigeria alongside all her coveted natural deposits and clement weather.

So, participation in polls should be seen as a first order civic responsibility as well as a demonstration of patriotism. Participation in the electoral process does not end with contesting or voting in an election. It includes taking actions to enable the triumph of the will of people as expressed through the ballot. This, in Nigerian parlance, is known as making votes count.

Here, the electorate has the duty of due vigilance which might entail “civil disobedience” even after voting. At this juncture, it is necessary for the Nigerian electorate to review their conducts and the incidents that took place during the 25^thFebruary elections with a view to making necessary adjustments to close lapses. In my column entitled, “Polls: How Nigerians played into INEC’s hands”, I had pointed out the lapses of voters in the presidential and National Assembly elections which were fully exploited by INEC and Prof. Mahmood Yakubu to rig the elections as being alleged.

The first step to prevent rigging is for Nigerians to insist on sorting and counting of votes as well as announcement and full documentation of results at the respective polling units as provided for by the Electoral Act and the election guidelines and manuals which were made pursuant to the provisions of the Act.

This is mandatory and it is the intention of the framers of the electoral laws that elections be started and concluded at the respective polling units. At the conclusion of polls, the remaining ballot papers should be cancelled by running two parallel lines across each of them with the word “cancelled” as well as signature of the appropriate electoral officer written on each ballot paper in the presence of the members of the polling unit. After this comes the stage of transmission of results.

Here, the results of the election should be entered in form EC8A with extra spaces crossed, and the forms signed by the presiding officer and political party agents. Thereafter, the result is transmitted via the bi-modal voters’ accreditation system from the venue of the polls to the result portal, copies distributed to political party agents and security agencies while one copy is published by posting it at the polling station. When these are done, the polls are concluded at the polling units. The results should then be taken to the ward collation centre for collation.

It Is after this point that the state House of Assembly results should be taken to the state constituency collation centre for final collation and declaration; while the governorship election results are taken to the respective local government area collation centres for the penultimate collation before declaration at the state level. This is enough to say that where the locus for any activity is mentioned, the people should insist on it because it has both legal and security implications. Permitting locus bypass as witnessed on February 25 amounts to acceptance on the part of the people and that leads to rigging and other poll infractions. (New Telegraph)