As Nigerians await the outcome of last Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections,the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deserves commendation for conducting free, fair and credible elections. Although, the elections witnessed delay of voting and pocket of violence in some states,it can be adjudged as peaceful. Eligible youths of voting age and other voters came out en masse to cast their vote. President Muhammadu Buhari should take the credit for signing the Electoral Act 22 as amended, which paved the way for the deployment of technology in the conduct of elections in the country.
With ther Biomodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS),voters were accredited with relatively ease, leading to the conduct of free, fair and transparent polls. Of equal mention is the naira redesign policy which curtailed the incidence of vote-buying. There was a radical departure from excessive use of cash by money bag politicians. In fact, the elections did not witness the use of money as obtained in the previous polls. The political culture has changed leading to a new voting pattern. With this development, one can confidently say,our over two decades of democracy has improved significantly.
The INEC has started announcing the results of the presidential and National assembly elections. Winners of the National Assembly elections have continued to emerge from different constituencies across the country. As usual, it is expected that the winners would be magnanimous in victory while losers should accept the outcome of the results in good faith. In any election, there must be a winner and a loser. Desperate politicians should refrain from making unguarded utterances capable of igniting crises.
If they have genuine cases of irregularities arising from the just concluded elections, they should seek redress through the relevant judicial processes. This is the best option to seek for redress instead of recruiting thugs to foment trouble or mayhem. It has also been reported that INEC’s server was slow in uploading the elections results. The hitches should be quickly addressed in order to provide Nigerians with accurate and reliable elections results. INEC should fix this problem before the March 11 governorship and state assembly elections.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the incidence of rigging which marred previous elections have been minimised, if not completely eliminated. INEC has become an independent and unbiased institution. Through various reforms and innovations, INEC operates like its contemporaries in developed countries. Nigerians pray that INEC will maintain the momentum in the subsequent elections.
Ibrahim Mustapha,
Pambegua, Kaduna state
08169056963.
