•Claims INEC breached trust of Nigerians
A citizen-led, research-based movement, #FixPolitics Initiative, has queried result of the February 25 presidential poll and subsequent declaration of a winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), stating that the haste and timing had raised a number of posers.
It accused the election management body of allegedly breaching trust of Nigerians with its reported failure to upload the outcome to its portal via the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in real time, as promised.
The Executive Director, Tony Ubani, in a statement, yesterday, recalled the various assurances by INEC officials of their preparedness for the onerous national assignment and full deployment of the BVAS to ensure credible polls.
He recollected that at a press conference in November 2022, INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, assured Nigerians of sanctity of their ballots through transmission of results to its portal from polling units in real time.
Ubani said: “The performance and controversies over the results mean that the electoral reforms and lessons declared to have been learned were not applied and, as an electoral body, it was significantly less prepared than it claimed.”
He stated that the commission had promised to upload polling unit results, with citizens accessing them in real time.
Yakubu had said last November: “The Commission introduced this innovation. It cannot turn around and undermine itself, as this technology has come to stay. We will upload polling unit results from the polling units. Citizens will have the right to view these results. After all, whom are we serving? The citizens. How can we deprive citizens access to results of the process conducted by them at the polling unit?
“I assure and reassure you that the 2023 general elections will be our best ever, and we are committed that votes cast by Nigerians will determine the outcome of the elections. Nothing more, nothing less.”
It is this assurance and several others by INEC, #FixPolitics noted, that built confidence among Nigerians to register and collect their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).
