PART 11/12

3am. A road outside the collation centre. Ola and three people in his car. Engine off. They have been here for four hours.

He has the IReV photographs. His agents who stayed photographed the result sheets. He has them on his phone. He has gone through them forty times. His count says one thing.

The collation centre says another.

A returning officer came out two hours ago. He said there was a verification issue and the announcement would be delayed. He went back inside. He came out again. Said the same thing. Two SUVs arrived an hour ago with tinted windows. Parked at the side of the building. Nobody got out for twenty minutes. Then someone got out and went inside.

Ola is watching the building.

He is very calm. He noticed an hour ago that he was very calm and found it strange. He is not sure if the calmness is understanding or something that comes after understanding. The thing that comes after you have traced all the steps and arrived at the destination you were always going to arrive at and there is nothing left to be surprised by.

One of the people with him says: Savage should be here.

Ola says nothing.

The person says: he said he would be here by midnight.

Ola says: I know.

He looks at his phone. There is a message from Savage from eleven thirty. It says: held up. Coming soon.

Ola has read the message several times. He does not respond to it.

He thinks about the primary. The eleven votes. Tola's voice on the phone. The delegate from Ward 3 who took another meeting. Whether Savage knew and said nothing or didn't know and should have.

He has been carrying this question for three months. He has not asked it directly. Every time he has almost asked it, something in the conversation shifted before he could. He tells himself this is because there was always something more urgent. He knows this is not entirely true.

The lights inside the collation centre are still on.

The returning officer comes out at three forty-seven. He stands on the steps. He reads from a sheet of paper.

He reads the results by ward. The numbers are not Ola's numbers. The margin is not close.

He announces the winner's name. He goes back inside.

The person beside Ola says: we should file a petition. He says: we have the photographs.

Ola says: I know.

He looks at the collation centre. The SUVs are still there. The lights inside are still on.

He says: I know.

He starts the engine. He drives home through empty streets. The photographs are on his phone in his pocket. He does not look at them.

Form EC8A is a single sheet of paper.

It has columns for the polling unit name, the number of accredited voters, the number of ballots cast, and the votes received by each candidate. At the bottom are spaces for the signatures of the presiding officer and each party agent present. The agent signs to confirm the count or writes "declined" if they dispute it.

I have read a lot of Form EC8As. They are the most granular public record the Nigerian electoral system produces. Each one represents a specific polling unit on a specific day. They are the bedrock of every electoral petition.

The journey from that form to the announced result passes through three stages. The ward collation centre, where EC8A figures are aggregated onto Form EC8B. The LGA collation centre, where EC8B figures are aggregated onto Form EC8C. The returning officer's declaration.

I went looking for the dead zone. The period between the signing of the Form EC8A and the announcement of the Form EC8C.

I found the steps that have witnesses and the steps that don't. The polling unit count has witnesses. Party agents. INEC officials. Potentially observers. The form is signed.

The journey between the polling unit and the ward collation centre is not supervised in any formal sense. The presiding officer walks or drives with the sealed forms. There is a chain of custody document. There is no independent verification of whether the sealed forms are the forms that were sealed.

I read the 2023 tribunal judgments from contests at the LGA and state levels. I found a consistent pattern in how courts have treated collation irregularities. IReV photographs from polling units have been admitted as evidence. Courts have weighed that evidence against original result sheets and found, consistently, that where there is a discrepancy the burden of proof sits with the petitioner.

I mapped what meeting that burden requires. The petitioner must show not just that the numbers differ but that the difference is the result of a specific act by a specific person. The photographs are evidence of the original count. They are not evidence of what happened between the count and the collation. The dead zone between the EC8A and the EC8C is the space where the photograph cannot reach.

I found the Kenya comparison. In 2017, the Kenyan Supreme Court nullified the presidential election on the basis of irregularities in the transmission and verification of results. The evidence category was the same as what Nigerian petitioners have presented in multiple cases. The judicial outcome was different. A Kenyan court looked at the same category of evidence and decided it was sufficient. A Nigerian court looked at comparable evidence and decided it was not.

In 2017 the Kenyan Supreme Court looked at transmission irregularities and nullified the election. Nigerian courts have looked at the same category of evidence repeatedly and declined to act. The photographs Ola has on his phone would have been sufficient evidence in Nairobi. In the local government collation centre on this road at 3am, they are not.