Supreme court ruling an invitation of election rigging

“Prior to the authorisation of its use by the Guidelines and Manual (supra), the Electoral Act, 2010 (as amended), in sections 49 (1) and (2), had ordained an analogue procedure for the accreditation process. As a corollary to the procedure outline above, section 53(2) of the said Act (that is, the Electoral Act) enshrined the consequences for the breach, negation or violation of the sanctity of the actual poll sequel to the consummation of the accreditation procedure in section 49 (supra).

“With the advantage of hindsight, INEC, pursuant to its powers under the said Electoral Act, authorised the deployment of the said Card Readers. “Even with the introduction of the said device, that is the Card Reader Machine, the National Assembly, in its wisdom, did not deem it necessary to bowdlerise the said analogue procedure in section 49 from the Act so that the Card Reader procedure would be the sole determinant of a valid accreditation process.

“Contrariwise,   from the Corrigendum No 2, made on March 28, 2015, amending paragraph 13(b) of the Approved Guidelines, it stands to reason that the Card Reader was meant to supplement the Voter’ Register and was never designed or intended to supplant, displace or supersede it.

“Indeed, since the Guidelines and Manual, which authorised the use and deployment of the electronic Card Reader Machine, were made in exercise of the powers conferred by the Electoral Act, the said Card Reader cannot, logically, depose or dethrone the Voters’ Register whose judicial roots are, firmly, embedded or entrenched in the selfsame Electoral Act from which it )the Voters’ Register). Directly, derives its sustenance and currency.

“Thus, any attempt to invest it (the Card Reader Machine procedure) with such overreaching pre-eminence or superiority over the Voters’ Register is like converting an auxiliary procedure- into the dominant procedure- of proof, that is, proof of accreditation.

“This is a logical impossibility. Indeed, only recently, this court in Shinkafi vs Yari, confirmed the position that the Card Reader Machine has not supplanted the statement of results in appropriate forms; hence, the appellant still had the obligation to prove petition relating to accreditation of voters and over-voting as enunciated in several decisions of this court”, Justice Nweze 
  The supreme Court ruling  of election cases of Ebonyi,Abia,Rivers, Akwaibom etal was hinged on this premises.This has taken Nigeria many steps back toward achieving a free and fair elections as their will not be need for electronic accreditation and the incident forms.
We are  back to when all a politician need is to snatch the electoral materials ,thump prints the voters card,stuff it in the box, mark the attendance register and returned same to the Inec office with the presiding officer.
While we jubilate let's pause and think as we are back to electoral war front.