On hindsight, 2023 elections will turn out to be the best ever conducted - INEC boasts

Festus Okoye, the National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has asked stakeholders and Nigerians not to base the success of the 2023 general elections on the challenges faced with uploading results in real-time to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) alone.

Mr Festus made the comment on Friday, April 21 when he appeared as a guest on Sunrise Daily, Channels Television Morning show program.

Touching on the matters that arose from the just concluded elections, he said that the success of the polls should not be based on the delay of results from the polling units to the online viewing portal. Making an argument for the electoral commission, he noted that there were successes in other areas of the conduct of the elections.

He further noted that in hindsight, the 2023 elections might turn out to be the best elections ever conducted in the country.

"Let me say this, at a very reflective moment, at a very rational moment, at a moment devoid of elections, we will come to see that this election will turn out to be one of the best elections ever conducted in this country. In will show that this election is more like a revolutionary situation," Mr Okoye said.

"And I say this advisedly. I say this because if you look at the whole gamut of elections, I do not think that it will be fair to reduce the conduct of the 2023 general elections to the issue of result upload alone. That will be unfair and I say this because if you look at section 43 of the Electoral Act of 2022 it makes it optional for any political party that wants to nominate polling agents of political party agents to the 176,606 where we deployed election materials," he concluded.

Recall that Nigerians and other observer missions said the election was rigged while highlighting voter suppression and manipulation.

The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) to Nigeria stated that the presidential and National Assembly elections were marred by a lack of transparency on the part of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The mission said INEC’s operational capacity was hampered by the ongoing fuel and Naira shortage and cited the abuse of incumbency advantage and a troubling electoral security environment as some of the factors that distorted the playing field for the candidates, reports Vanguard.

EU’s EOM Chief Observer, Barry Andrews who presented the aforesaid points in the mission’s preliminary statement at a press conference held in Abuja, stressed that on Saturday’s election day, the trust in INEC was seen to further reduced due to delayed polling processes and information gaps related to much-anticipated access to results on its Results Viewing Portal (IReV).

NBA