Rundown Of The 34th LASUSU Elections: Democracy or Mockery?
The gist you've been waiting for.
If you are not subscribed to the LASU Life Newsletter click the button below so you don't miss out on any of our publications. Our Editors will be writing about LASUSU Politics and more.
The second semester being so short might have been a slightly acceptable excuse for some of the faults noted at the just concluded LASUSU election, but for a greater part, the entire process appears to be a mockery of democracy.
*PRE-ELECTION SHENANIGANS*
Wednesday the 1st of November 2023 had not only been a much anticipated day for LASUITES because it was a new month that signifies how close examinations are, but because it was the day for the LASUSU elections. Leading up to the election day, we witnessed many activities from aspirants, including rallies.
However, unlike in the past, many would agree that Students did not seem as invested in this election and even some candidates did not seem to be very invested too... well, until the election day itself.
Two days to the election, on 30th October 2023, a manifesto reading was organized to take place at the MBA Hall. While we expected aspirants to show up and try to convince students to vote for them, it was quite surprising to see them appear with such disgusting confidence like they knew another route to winning without actually winning the hearts of the electorates.
Similarly, students did not seem interested in hearing what the aspirants had to say, they had chosen their candidates based on what works for them and they were not willing to consider that others might have better plans for them. It was more of a favoritism based on faculties' favorites and by the morning of the election, we witnessed several faculties pleading with their students to vote for the candidates from their faculty because "we can't say we want to vote for people in our faculty and canvass for others in other faculties because these people have plans for us and others would not be able to do it". At this point, it was no longer a matter of what was best for LASUSU, but of what was best for each faculty.
*THE DAY HAS COME*
Fast-forward now to the day of the election, the LASUSU election petition tribunal held a press conference to discuss possible solutions just in case aspirants are not satisfied with the results of the election. However, the aspirants were not even present at the press conference. Making it seem like they had better things to do to win than consider other options. Again, the audacity and confidence are too strong to be natural. Maybe a godfather backing somewhere or a few guys behind laptops in their rooms are the reason for this confidence.
After the press release which ended around 10 a.m., e-voting was scheduled to commence at all polling units across the school which it did as the 34th LASUSU IEC Chairman, Adegbola Mubarak was said to have input the log in details at the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Sciences around 10:15 a.m.
However, as of 1 p.m., some polling units especially the ones for the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies (FCMS) were reportedly battling with network issues and could not begin voting. These faculties could only start voting, a few hours after those in the Faculty of Sciences and others began theirs. Yet, when these faculties that started late were given extra time to make up, a small mob reportedly from Sciences were said to have come to disrupt the electoral processes.
It was during all of this that the President of the Faculty of Education, Socrates was said to have been arrested after he was mistaken to have beaten the IEC Chairman of the Faculty of Education, just because he had taken off his shirt out of anger over delayed voting.
LARGE DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF ELECTORATES
After struggling and waiting long hours to get tokens to vote, many students got their tokens only to find out that they had voted and they did not even know, maybe they were drunk, or maybe some IEC members were paid/threatened to print out tokens with random matriculation numbers which were in turn used to vote on their behalf.
How hard is it to guess a matriculation number when you know the faculty code and the year of admission?
Also, a particular candidate from sciences was said to have had someone lie to 100-level mathematics education student that they were having a test scheduled for 7:30 am, and on reaching there, they were asked for their matric number, and the token was generated for them and was used to vote for this candidate.
Therefore, it did not come as a shock to us when we received reports that the elections have been declared inconclusive because a total of 10,512 voters were recorded while about 5,000 were manually accredited.
*WHAT CAN BE DONE*
We received a press release verified by the IEC public relations officer, where the IEC Chairman attested to the fact that there were certain discrepancies in the just concluded election. This is due to the fact that over 10,000 voters were accredited digitally but only about 5,000 were accredited manually across all 16 polling units.
LASU LIFE reached out to the IEC Chairaman to confirm the legitimacy of the press release, but as of press time, the president is yet to provide any response. However, the PRO of the IEC confirmed to our editor via text, that the release is from the chairman.
This, led the IEC to declare the election inconclusive in accordance to the supreme LASUSU constitution Electoral Act as amended 2022, Part A, Section 13 (3) which States that 'Where the total votes cast in an election exceeds the total number of accredited boters, the result of the election shall be declared null and void', and a new election would be scheduled in the next five working days. However, this election would be conducting through open-secret-ballot as the IEC says it has lost confidence in the e-voting system.
However, ahead of other elections, the IEC might want to consider providing a medium for students to vote in their homes or hostels to avoid rigging and even fights from breaking out.
Till then, we will keep our fingers crossed that aspirants would actually allow the electoral process to be free and fair rather than make a mockery of it.
On the other hand, we urge aspirants to gather evidences while the new elections would take place, so they could come up with convincing cases before the election petition tribunal if they have to appear or even file a petition after the new election.
LASU LIFE is open to any other information you might want to share about the election and if you have evidence, even better.
📝: Ayo Oladiran, Editor, LASU Life Newsletter 🛩
Thank-you for reading the LASU Life Newsletter. If you enjoy our publication share it with your friends and don’t forget to subscribe. You can also follow LASU Life on Instagram and Twitter.
A well written publication