Dear Professor Mahmood Yakubu.

I will be very plain and straight-to-the-point in this letter.

The General elections of 2019 had come and gone. The governorship elections of Kogi and Bayelsa States had also come and gone. We are now waiting for the governorship elections of Edo and Ondo States to also come and go too.

But in all these elections, something is seriously wrong. Something is seriously missing.

Professor Mahmood, why is it so difficult for INEC to include the very necessary information about the elections inside the published results? Why did you refuse to include the number of registered voters, the number of accredited voters, total votes cast, total valid votes, and total voided votes in all the election results which you uploaded on the official INEC website, except for only the presidential election result which has all the necessary information complete in it? Why then did you omit it in all other election results?

Many Nigerians and many Civil Society Organisations had sent series of Freedom of Information Request Letters to your office and to the official email of INEC; yet the necessary information were not yet added to the published results yet. If INEC had the strength and the time to publish the names of the parties and the number of votes they got in the various elections, and to also indicate which party won the election, what exactly is so difficult for them to make the results complete by adding the total registered voters, accredited voters, total votes cast, total valid votes, and total voided votes?

And again, I do not know why there would be some differences in the number of accredited voters in the same area for elections that took place at the same time. Take for instance in Anambra State, (I don’t know for any other state, but I know for Anambra), There were no postponements in the three senatorial elections and the presidential election. That means, the total number of the accredited voters for the three senatorial elections should be the same for the presidential election, since none of the senatorial elections were postponed and concluded on another date. Professor Mahmood, if I am not correct here, you let me know, and give me reasons why there should be any difference.

Without wasting time, let me roll out the values of the numbers of accredited voters in the three zones. For Anambra North, it was 210,819. For Anambra South, it was 224,569. For Anambra Central, it was 223,877. Total of the three is 659,265. Professor Mahmood, these values are very genuine, because they were announced by your officials. But if you think that these figures are fabricated, then you have to go back to the INEC Website and upload your own values let us compare and contrast.

The number of accredited voters for the presidential election in Anambra State was 675,273; and if you check the difference, it was a whopping 16,008 additional accredited voters. This is more than the number of the accredited voters in the whole of Awka which is the capital city.

I am considering this open letter as a Freedom of Information Request addressed to the National INEC Chairman publicly. Since you do not want to reply to numerous FOI requests sent to you in private, then you have to reply to this letter publicly.

Professor Mahmood Yakubu, you have to issue a press statement to address these three issues.

First, you must explain why all the necessary information needed to make the election results complete were obviously missing in all the results which INEC published online on their website.

Secondly, you must explain why there was a difference of 16,008 accredited voters between the senatorial election and the presidential election in Anambra State where the accreditation was not done differently, and being that cancelled polling units were cancelled altogether for all elections held in that polling unit.

Thirdly, you must tell us the date by which INEC must have uploaded the complete results with all the necessary information.

As is the case with Freedom of Information requests, I am expecting your reaction and reply to this letter on or before seven days from the day this letter is published.

Even if you didn’t see this letter immediately it is published, some members of your staff will see it, and they will get it to your notice. Lots of Nigerians are going to see this letter as well, and we will all get enlightened together, and we will come together and bombard you with lots of more FOI request letters.

We have waited for too long for you to give us the full results.
It is time we come for them by ourselves.

Have a nice day.

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