March 10, (THEWILL) – Former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung, has faulted the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the controversies that trailed the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly election, adding that all is not well with Nigeria.
Speaking on the state of the nation, especially post-presidential election Nigeria, Dalung noted that the country has never been so sharply divided along the lines of primordial sentiments.
“The polls, so far, have hugely been an unsuccessful attempt at legitimacy because there have been series of controversies revolving around the conduct of the elections,” he noted.
He said that “INEC had mobilized Nigerians to trust the electoral process and to believe in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), using earlier elections in Ekiti and Osun States. What turned out to be the situation on the 25th of February appears to be a negation of the impression Nigerians had of the BVAS after initial experiments.”
Since the conduct of the elections a fortnight ago, according to Dalung, “there are complaints concerning the deployment and performance of the BVAS and the violence that characterised the conduct of the elections in some parts of the country.”
He explained that the general dissatisfaction with the exercise explains why “there have also been calls from major political actors advising caution, some withdrawing from the process, and some calling for the resignation of the umpire and even outright cancellation of the entire process.
“We may dismiss some of these things as rantings of political failures as is usually the case. But behind every smoke, there are some elements of fire.
“I contested the House of Representatives election for Langtang North/South Federal Constituency. I lost the election. But the circumstances surrounding my loss of the election remain what I will test judicially,” he contended, adding that, “again, if you take the provision of the Electoral Act, as it relates to downloading or uploading of results, if you go now, to the INEC portal to look for the results of the election that have been declared for my Constituency, you can only find that only five wards, representing about 30 per cent of the polling units in the Constituency have been uploaded.”
According to him, “everything taken altogether means there is no compliance with the law, which says the results shall be uploaded at the polling unit.
“The effect”, he explained, “is that most of the results as declared by the INEC are in sharp contrast and disagreement with the results our agents have and are holding. If the Electoral Act was complied with, and these results were uploaded to the INEC server immediately, it could have been impossible for anybody to tamper with the results in the process.”
He warned, thus, that dismissing this outcry about results not being uploaded to the INEC server is a very serious issue. He called on the INEC to use the one-week postponement window to improve the organisation and conduct of the remaining exercise.
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