Dr. Usman Bugaje, a political activist and Islamic scholar, has said that efforts to prevent the mandated electronic transmission of election results are intended to create the conditions for electoral tampering and provide some political actors with an unfair advantage.
Speaking on Arise Television’s Morning Show on Tuesday, Bugaje made the accusation while addressing criticism of those who oppose the electronic transmission of results in real time.
He asserts that the nation’s inability to electronically transmit election results is only a pretext meant to undermine the political process.
“All of these are alibis to get ready for rigging.” It’s really obvious. Even in the most isolated villages, you have POS. People are chatting and sending messages on WhatsApp, working, and having phones,” Bugaje remarked.
He contended that since INEC had already demonstrated its preparedness, it was not the duty of legislators to assess the Independent National Electoral Commission’s operational capability.
“In any event, INEC has the right to state that we are unable to deliver. Legislators are not supposed to do that. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, INEC itself suggested in its response at the public hearing that this is the stance,” he continued.
Bugaje asked why the Senate would conjecture about INEC’s purported incapacity to transmit in real time when, in his view, experts had confirmed that the nation’s network coverage was sufficient.
“The Senate is very clear on his own position, so what is the point of speculating about INEC’s incapacity to do that?” he asked.
“And in recent days, experts have publicly stated that INEC can provide the necessary level of coverage.”
He insisted that once network access was established, findings could still be uploaded, even in places with poor connectivity.
“Keep in mind that the message will reach the portal by the time you enter an area of coverage, even if you post at a faraway location. Therefore, it’s not an impossible thing,” he continued.
According to reports, the activist went on to claim that electronic transmission of election results has been effectively adopted in a number of nations with less developed internet infrastructure.
This is exactly what many nations across the world that have much less established internet access have done. In actuality, these aren’t any justifications,” Bugaje said.
“They are making excuses and alibis in order to get ready for rigging.” Otherwise, given all the developments in the twenty-first century, why should it be blocked? In any event, we have enough time to increase INEC’s capacity. One month is enough time to do this.
Electoral Manipulation Allegations
Resistance to real-time transmission, according to Bugaje, is suspicious and intended to undermine the election system.
Therefore, I believe that making excuses is a dubious concept. And it’s obvious that the goal is to figure out how to weaken the voting process so that some individuals may take advantage of it to rig our elections the way they have,” he said.
He also brought up previous election disputes, raising concerns about why some of them were not looked at in detail.
You may easily remember what happened even last year. After they turned off, a variety of pictures began to appear, and as of right now, no one has really given us a satisfactory explanation of what transpired,” he stated.
“I mean, why didn’t it occur with other outcomes if it was a glitch? Why just the presidential outcomes? And in a serious nation, this is something that has to have been looked into. If anyone was found to be at fault, they would have faced consequences, but many of these crooks are getting away with it.
