INEC under Mahmood Yakubu is a disaster

BY NN’EMEKA MADUEGBUNA

The above headline was my immediate reaction when it became obvious that INEC under the leadership of Mahmood Yakubu was unable to transmit the results of the 2023 presidential elections as he promised Nigerians and the whole world. The decision of INEC to postpone the 2023 gubernatorial and state legislature election is further confirmation of the calamity that is INEC led by Mahmood Yakubu.

How come that on a day that INEC gets the go-ahead from the court of appeal, based on an application by the electoral body, to go on with the gubernatorial and state legislature elections as scheduled for March 11, INEC with Mahmood Yakubu as chairman announces a postponement of these elections to March 18?

It is either Yakubu and his team at INEC are taking Nigerians for a ride, or they are quite incompetent. The reasons provided by INEC in its press release of March 8 which was signed by Barrister Festus Okoye, National Commissioner & Chairman, Information and National Committee on Voter Education, are hogwash. My position is premised on two reasons.

The first relates to the BVAS devices. I am informed by a number of IT experts that the devices can be configured to run several rounds of elections with basic user training and should have enough storage capacity to hold at least two rounds of elections, i.e. presidential elections and national legislature elections as one round, and gubernatorial and state legislature elections making up the second round. The devices according to the experts would therefore not need to be reconfigured for each round of elections.

The second reason for my position is with regards to the need for a separate backup exercise, INEC had informed Nigerians and the international community that the election results on the BVAS device would be uploaded to the collation server once there is network connectivity. Competent system administration would create a live/automatic backup during each instance of the results upload. It is suboptimal to say that a separate backup exercise is required, as INEC has stated.

President Muhammadu Buhari assured Nigerians and the international community of free and fair 2023 elections. It is evident INEC with Mahood Yakubu as chairman seems incapable of achieving this objective.

Unfortunately, rather than remain contrite as a result of his ineptitude, Mahood Yakubu is on a high horse. He would definitely carry the can if the brewing crisis is not resolved.