On April 20, 2013, the Edo State Electoral Commission held local government elections in the state. Several radio and television stations were replete with disturbing reports by election observers of how the electoral body performed worse than the old infamous Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO). It is hard to forget FEDECO which in 1983 conducted elections in which the ruling party- the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) won more votes than were available and also emerged victorious in centres where elections did not hold. This was what prompted this column to imagine earlier that FEDECO which was dissolved in 1983 must have resurrected in Benin City, 30 years after and got renamed the Edo State Electoral Commission.

In the Edo local elections, voting materials got to many polling stations in Benin City, the state capital- the same city from where the electoral body operates as late as between 4 and 5pm. Whereas such lateness warranted the postponement of elections in the affected polling stations in the city, the electoral body "successfully" conducted elections in far-away polling centres –some of them over 100 kilometres from the same Benin City! We ought to ask who fixed those elections and whether the system threw up a new election magician, more popularly known in Nigeria as "Mr. Fix It". We suspect that the new rigging device may have taken Chief Tony Anenih generally called the leader in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by surprise as his party reportedly "lost" in many of its previously undisputed strong holds.

Indeed, some 10 months earlier, during the governorship election in the state, the ACN fixing machine turned the federal government security apparatus against its acclaimed owner. It was much longer that the PDP began to question the role of the army brigade commander in Benin in elections in the state. So, who is this new Mr. Fix it in the heartbeat of the nation that can defeat the largest political party in Africa even in the polling booth of the leader? Analysts were still pondering over this question when another opportunity for a more forensic analysis presented itself on Tuesday October 22, 2013. This time, the contest was for the office of the chairman of Esan North East Local Government- a contest that had been put off twice ostensibly because the man targeted to win could not hence the re-run election on October 22.

To the amazement of many, the ruling party in the State was announced as the winner thereby defeating the PDP again. This time however, it was not too difficult to identify the new Mr. Fix it. Who announced the results? Where, when and how was it done when the returning officer was allegedly missing? The story was that while some voters, party supporters, polling agents, election monitors were waiting anxiously at the venue of the event, the Edo FEDECO chairman himself declared a winner in far- away Benin City. From the history of elections in the country, Edo was just being more proactive than others. The situation in Kwara was more intriguing.

Before the edo magic, Kwara had adopted the FEDECO posture to fix elections in Offa. According to the media, results from all 12 council wards in the area had revealed that the All Progressive Congress (APC) swept 11 of the 12 wards while the PDP got just one ward. The results were reportedly signed by officers of the Kwara State Electoral body in the wards; as well as by agents of all the parties and security agents and the general testimony was that all was well. In no time, political party agents, security teams and election observers who gathered at the local government collation centre in Offa could no longer find the Returning Officer who by law should announce the final results. The job was concluded by the chairman of the Kwara FEDECO himself although no one knew the source of his own figures.

In the elections held in other areas of the state in October 2013, Kwara FEDECO recorded 300, 000 votes over and above the turn-out of the 2011 elections in the state and allegedly allocated majority of the "votes" to the ruling nPDP. The lesson for the nation particularly the police is that closing nPDP secretariats here and there cannot stop the fixing of elections by incumbents and other powerful groups. But why is it so easy to fix Nigerian elections? One immediate answer comes from Anambra state where a governorship election is due in 2 weeks. According to reports from Awka, politicians are allegedly procuring voters' cards at the rate of N5000 each in several communities in the state. Many people are said to be trooping from different parts of the state to locations like Anambra East local government area where the market is said to be booming. One main reason why the rumour is likely to be believed is that the registration of voters was poorly done in Anambra. It will be recalled that during the exercise, 4 registration centres were ‘discovered' in Nziko forest at Nteje in Oyi Local Government Area of the state.

Although the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state Professor Onukogu was supposedly shocked to see the ghost centres located at a shrine in the deep forest, he never explained how such important election facilities were distributed without his own knowledge. Can those who took election machines into the forest not fix elections? They can because in the Ondo governorship election in October 2012, it was proved that several unlawful names were injected into the voters' register. Such unlawful names are often used to massively thumb-print voters' cards as was done in the Adamawa re-run governorship election where INEC distributed 200 instead of 1000 ballot boxes in Thukudou/Sukufu/Zar wards of the state. At the end of the day, there were results from all the 1, 000 ballot boxes including those not distributed! One politician was actually caught with 6 ballot boxes inside his house.
It is thus difficult to identify Mr. Fix it because he is a member of a syndicate made up of INEC, Politicians, Traditional institutions, Law enforcement agencies and the Judiciary.