Following the announcement by INEC that the APC Presidential candidate had fulfilled the constitutional requirements of gaining a plurality of votes in at least 24 states as well as the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja, The Catholic bishops Of Nigeria among others, have sharply criticized the Independent Nigerian Election Commission (INEC) for its handling of the vote count and called for the government to address complaints raised by voters and the other political parties.
In a statement from Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji of Owerri, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, the Bishops said;
“The delay in the electronic transmission of the results of the polling units to the INEC results viewing portal before their announcement at the collation centres raised suspicion in many minds about the transparency of the entire process,”
“There is, therefore, palpable tension in the air and agitations not just by some political parties but by a cross-section of the Nigerian population,” he said.
“No matter how long it takes, INEC has to ensure that it does the right thing now to ensure that the sanctity of the collective will of the electorate is not violated, to restore the confidence of the citizenry in our government and its institutions,” the archbishop continued. “As the saying goes, it is no use running when one is on the wrong road.”
Kyle Abts, executive director of the International Committee on Nigeria, has also criticized INEC for their abysmal performance in the just concluded presidential election.
“It is becoming clear that INEC was too lax in their approach to collecting and reporting votes. There are reports of ballot stuffing or missing ballot boxes along with polling stations never opening,” Abts said.
However, Obi’s Labour Party has vowed to fight the result in court. “We will sue for an annulment for sure. This is the worst election since Nigeria re-entered civilian rule in 1999,” Barrister Yakubu Bawa, a leader of Obi’s legal team, told the press.
Bawa alleged that the voting results of polling units in Lagos State were stopped from uploading to the election commission server and that in Rivers and Delta States the tabulation results were falsified.
This year the election commission attempted to subvert fraud by setting up electronic voter identification through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System at the polling units and uploading the results from the polling units to avoid manipulation of paper ballot tallies.
But fraudsters allegedly found a way to work around the system, said Kunle Lawal, executive director of The Electoral College of Nigeria, an observer group in Lagos.
“Some ingenious Nigerian politicians were able to evade the electronic system due to the failure of the polling units to upload their results electronically. In many cases the signed and stamped voter tallies at the polling units differed from the results registered at the INEC collation centre.”
