March 01, (THEWILL) – The Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room on the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections, on Wednesday, faulted the entire process of the February 25 elections, saying the polls lack transparency and credibility.
The situation room is made up of over 70 CSOs including Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), CLEEN Foundation, Action Aid Nigeria, Centre for Citizens with Disabilities (CDD).
THEWILL reports that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Wednesday, declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), as winner of the February 25 Presidential election in Nigeria.
The INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the results of the polls, said Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to beat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who got 6,984,520, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), who secured 6,101,533 votes.
Reating to the poll results in Abuja on Wednesday, the CSOs said its observation and analysis of the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections indicates that it allegedly fell short of “the credibility threshold.”
Convener of the CSO’s situation room, Ene Obi, held that there can be no trust in the election results when collation was not transparent, going by INEC’s promise to transmit results electronically.
Citing a number of reasons including the Independent National Electoral Commission’s failure to upload results electronically on realtime, the CSOs submitted that the polls “cannot be considered to have been credible.
”The Situation Room expected that the innovative reforms introduced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in furtherance of the new Electoral Act 2022, will lead to efficient and accountable eection management, incuding improved access to poing units, hitch-free accreditation and voting, accurate and transparent results collation, and effective violence mitigation.
“Contrary to the above expectations, the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections were marred by very poor organisation, severe logistical and operational faiure, lack of essential electoral transparency, substantial disruption of voting, and several incidents of violence.
“As a result, the process cannot be considered to have been credible.
“Given the lack of transparency, particularly in the result collation process, there can be no confidence in the results of these elections.
“In addition, there was very poor communication from INEC on election day and on its challenges with its processes; its citizens contact numbers did not work and even when there were challenges with uploads to the INEC Results Viewing (iReV) Portal.
“This is all the more disappointing since the eections were held in an atmosphere in which the people showed remarkabe commitment to democracy, eagerly engaging in the electoral process and waiting patiently to vote in very difficult circumstances”, they said.
The CSOs urged INEC to restore public trust on its credibility by explaining in details how results where collated, as well as why the electronic transmission of results failed.
The statement partly reads,”In the light of the shortcomings outined in this interim statement, the Situation Room calls on INEC to provide details of the process leading up to the results it collated for the elections.
“Situation Room demands that INEC provides information on why its promise to improve the transparency of the collation process through the introduction of theiReVPortal performed below expectation.
“Situation Room further demands that INEC conducts an audit of polling units where elections did not take place to estabish the reasons for the failure.
“Situation Room also calls on INEC to note that pubic confidence in its capacity to run elections is gravely shaken, and that it would require extraordinary efforts for trust to be reestabished.
“Situation Room calls on all political parties and aggrieved parties to pursue well estabished constitutional and legal remedies available to them and go through the democratic process of the courts.
“We call on Nigerians to remain calm and express their displeasure, if need be, through a peaceful and democratic way.
“Finally, Situation Room commends Nigerians for the increased turnout recorded during the voting and calls for restraints even in the light of INEC’s failings.”
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