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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Friday said it would not lower the bar for the 2023 General Elections as it would continue to upload polling unit results to the INEC Results in Viewing Portal.
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, INEC Chairman, made this known at the Yiaga Africa Post-election Roundtable and Public Presentation of Final Report on the Observation of the 2022 Ekiti and Osun Governorship Elections.
Represented by Mr Festus Okoye, Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, INEC, Yakubu said that the commission would continue to listen and learn valuable lessons from those who observed the governorship elections and improve on it.
“I want to seize this opportunity to assure Nigerians that this present commission will be bold and courageous in prosecuting the 2023 general elections.
“We will continue to harvest lessons from the Edo, Ondo, Anambra, Ekiti and the Osun governorship elections in shaping the way we approach the 2023 general election.
“We are going to harvest all the good practices, we are also going to look at some of those issues we did not do so well and we will improve on them.
“Our assurance is that this commission will not lower the bar and we are going to continue to upload polling unit results to our INEC results viewing portal this commission will not depart from it.”
Yakubu said that citizens would be involved at every inch of the process in terms of knowing what is going on at the various polling units through INEC,s processes and procedures.
He added that INEC would continue to also manage the results collation process transparently.
He encouraged civil society organisations, the media, political parties and all the critical stakeholders to study the Electoral Act 2022 to have a working knowledge of the provisions of the Act.
Dr Hussain Abdu, Board Chair, Yiaga Africa, said that the Ekiti and Osun elections marked a very significant turning point in electoral history.
Abdu said that the Electoral Act as amended was a major milestone in Nigeria’s journey to more democratic and transparent electoral processes and it has boasted the confidence of citizens to participate in elections.
He said that logistics is still one major challenge of the electoral process although it was improving adding that the event was aimed at looking at some of the electoral challenges from past elections to chat a way forward for 2023.
“Citizens are beginning to believe that their votes will count, and when you raise the hope of citizens is always better that if you cannot improve on what you have done, then you must sustain it.”
Abdu called on INEC to address the challenge of disproportional polling units where some units would be overcrowded with thousands of voters whereas others would be scanty.
He urged INEC to work on its logistics and the distribution of voters to polling units among others and called on all stakeholders to work collectively towards achieving a better electoral process ahead of the 2023 elections.
The Chairman of the Inter-party Advisory Council (IPAC)Mr Yabagi Sani, advises Yiaga Africa and INEC to work closely with political parties ahead of 2023 because the election would be a watershed in the journey of entrenching democracy in Nigeria.
Sani urged INEC not to rest on its oars but to continue to work to build the confidence of citizens to own the process and promote democracy.
“As political parties, we observed that there is still a lacuna that all of us must have to weigh in, that is the transmission of electoral results from polling units.
He, therefore, called on INEC to make the collation process more transparent to make votes count in the 2023 elections.
Cynthia Mbamalu, Director of Programmes, Yiaga Africa while presenting the summary of the report launched said it covered the pre-election environment, INEC’s preparation, security atmosphere, voter education and critical incidents at the elections.
Mbamalu said that the report recommended that the National Assembly should expedite action in signing the National Electoral Offences Commission Bill to allow for the arrest and protection of electoral violators.
She said that INEC needed to revisit voter allocation to polling units for equitable distribution of voters, prioritise an audit of the voter register to avoid duplication and the inter-agency Committee should be expanded to include anti-graft agencies among others.
The Guardian
