The Nigeria Civil Society, Situation Room has described the conduct of the 2023 general election not credible stating that contrary to the above expectations, the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections were marred by very poor organisation, severe logistical and operational failure, lack of essential electoral transparency, substantial disruption of voting and several incidents of violence.
The group said as a result, the process cannot be considered to have been credible given the lack of transparency, particularly in the result collation process, there can be no confidence in the results of these elections.
The group noted this at the third interim joint statement by the Convener, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, Ene Obi, Co-Convener, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room,Asma’u Joda and
Co-Convener, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, James Ugochukwu said there was very poor communication from INEC on election day and on its challenges with its processes; its citizens contact numbers did not work and even when there were challenges with uploads to the INEC Results Viewing (iReV) Portal.
They said this is all the more disappointing since the elections were held in an atmosphere in which the people showed remarkable commitment to democracy, eagerly engaging in the electoral process and waiting patiently to vote in very difficult circumstances.
“Situation Room demands that INEC provides information on why its promise to improve the transparency of the collation process through the introduction of the iReV Portal performed below expectation.
Situation Room further demands that INEC conducts an audit of polling units where elections did not take place to establish the reasons for the failure.
Also, the Director General of the Labour Party (LP) Presidential Campaign Council, Mr Akin Osuntokun has appealed to Nigerians to remain calm and avoid any incidents that will undermine the peaceful coexistence in the country.
Osuntokun in an interview in Abuja faulted the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the late upload of results after days of election said he was expecting a pleasant surprise from the electoral umpire by uploading the results.
In his words “I have no sufficient right indices to believe that the right thing will be done. I want to be pleasantly surprised. I don’t want to say that what is going to happen is going to be wrong, I can only hope that INEC will do the right thing.
He stated that the results were supposed to have been uploaded almost immediately after counting of votes were concluded at the polling units.
