. Says wave of litigations loom
From Okwe Obi, Abuja
Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has scored the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) low in the conducted of the Presidential and National Assembly elections, stating that the polls were affected by several loopholes.
CDD said its rating was based on data received from its 4,900 field observers deployed across the country who identified operational issues, poor communication by INEC, violence, voter intimidation and vote buying as some of the anomalies, which undermined the process.
Its Director, Idayat Hassan, in a statement, yesterday, warned that on the basis of the loopholes, which characterised the process, there could be a wave of litigations after the declaration of the results.
“Nigeria is likely to see another wave of electoral litigation in its courts that will likely reverse some electoral outcomes and perhaps even impact on governance in the short-term,” she said.
Although, Hassan applauded the fact that the election was not postponed like the past three elections, which have all been delayed, she decried late arrival of INEC officials to polling units as well as challenges with bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS).
She insisted that some voters voted in contravention of the legal framework, which requires that all voters must be authenticated by BVAS in order to vote.
“Although less pronounced elsewhere in the country 8.7% of observers witnessed this taking place in south-south, 5.9% in southwest, 9.6% in the northeast, 4.2% in the southeast and 7.7% in the north-central zone.
“Technical issues were also noted by our observers, with 23.1% having witnessed issues of BVAS malfunction.
“This was particularly acute in the northeast, with 42.7% of observers recording a malfunction, but was also high in the northwest (28.7%),” she said.
Consequently, she flayed INEC for the poor handling of the Result Viewing Portal (IReV), which it stressed was designed to provide real-time transmission of election results (Form EC 8A) from polling units to the central collation centre.
The election observer further stressed that the IReV was an attempt to enhance the transparency of the process, and reduce the incidence of vote rigging.
According to her, as of 9pm on election day, there were no results uploaded to the platform for the presidential results, adding that at 11:00 on Monday 27 February only 53,154 polling unit results out of a total of 176,734 were publicly available on the platform.
“The fact that some Senatorial and Federal House of Representatives elections were uploaded also fueled rumours of vote manipulation.
“Despite optimism from both INEC and citizens that technology could be a game changer in Nigeria’s elections, the way the technology was deployed during results transmission in particular has arguably weakened the public perception of transparency and accountability, rather than strengthened it.”