Nigeria\u2019s 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections which held on February 25, 2023 is being equated with the disastrous 2007 general elections. The 2007 elections were described by Nigerians and international observers as disastrous. The 2023 general election is being described in similar vein, with allegations of vote rigging, incompetence of election management and officials and sever logistical failures. According to the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, the election was marred by very poor organisation, severe logistical and operational failure, lack of essential transparency, substantial disruption of voting and several incidents of violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several\nother Nigerian observer groups have described the election in similar light.\nAlso, international observers have not pulled punches in calling the election\nfor what it is. The joint observer delegation of the National Democratic\nInstitute and the international Republican Institute (NDI\/IRI), both of the United\nStates noted\nthat despite the much-needed reforms to the electoral legal\nframework, the election\nfell well short of Nigerian citizens\u2019 reasonable expectations. In\naddition, logistical\nchallenges and multiple incidents of political violence overshadowed the\nelectoral process and impeded a substantial number of voters from\nparticipating. The European Union was not any less harsh in its criticism\nof the election. The European Union which deployed one of the largest\ndelegation of observers, stated that, the Independent National Electoral\nCommission (INEC) lacked efficient planning and transparency during critical\nstages of the electoral process and trust in the Commission was seen to further\nreduce on election day as a result of delayed polling processes and information\ngaps related to much anticipated access to INEC\u2019s Results Viewing Portal\n(IReV). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specific\nfailures identified include large scale failure to open polls at the prescribed\ntime of 8:30 am. Even in polling units within Nigeria\u2019s Federal Capital City,\nsome less than five kilometres from the National Headquarters of INEC, the\npolls were marred by the incompetence of the Commission. A voter in a polling\nunit at Asokoro, which is less than 15 minutes\u2019 drive from INEC headquarters,\ndescribed how opening of polls was delayed until just before noon and how he\ncould not get to vote until about 8:00 pm. According to him, voting in that\npolling unit could only conclude at about 1:00 am, with collation concluding\nlater in the morning of the next day. The situation was same across several\nparts of the country. In almost all States South of the country, polling\nstarted very late. Most of the States in the Northern part of the country\nrecorded earlier start times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also,\nthere were reports of elections not holding in many locations across the\ncountry due to violence occasioned by attacks by thugs, and non-deployment of\nINEC staff and materials to some polling units. Affected citizens have been expressing\ntheir displeasure with the situation. However, election held in some locations on Sunday, February\n26. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nBi-Modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) touted as the silver bullet for good\nelections was not used for its intended purpose. This was the first time it was\ndeployed nationwide for elections. While the devices worked well in several\nareas, many polling units with more than 1,000 voters had only one device,\nwhich slowed the voting process, and had citizens staying in their polling\nunits even up till the following day, to ensure that they were able to vote.\nThere were also reports of the malfunction of the BVAS in some locations. The\nmachine was hardly used to upload results into INEC\u2019s resulting viewing portal,\nknown as IReV, a requirement stated in section 50 (2) of the Electoral Act\n2022, and in INEC\u2019s Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of Elections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To\nfurther compound the challenges that bedevilled the voting process, the upload\nof polling unit results to the INEC\nResult Viewing (IReV) Portal was delayed several hours after election ended at\npolling units, in spite of voting having concluded by 2:30 pm in polling units\nwith small number of registered voters. While upload of results for National\nAssembly elections commenced in the late afternoon on election day, upload of\nresults for the Presidential election commenced well after 8:00 pm, after INEC\nissued a statement, to the effect that the website had suffered a glitch. The\ndelay in the upload of election results raised concern among citizens and election\nobservers, as the INEC had repeatedly presented the BVAS and IReV as tools to\npromote the credibility and transparency of elections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collation\nof Presidential elections commenced on Sunday, February 26 at the National\nCollation Centre located at the International Conference Centre in Abuja, with\nresults trickling in from the States. However, the collation exercise saw some\npolitical parties questioning the credibility\nof the results being collated, as they alleged that some results were written\nup and differ from the actual results in the affected areas. Agents of the\nmajor opposition party, the People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour\nParty staged a walk out at the National Collation Centre on February 27, the second day of collation and called for\nthe suspension of the collation process. On February 28, the three parties \u2013\nPDP, LP and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) called for the INEC Chairman,\nProf. Mahmood Yakubu in a joint press conference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As\nelection stakeholders, especially voters have been disenchanted with the\nprocess so far due to the plethora of challenges that characterised the\nelection and now bring its credibility into question. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria\u2019s 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections which held on February 25, 2023 is being equated with the disastrous 2007 general elections. The 2007 elections were described by Nigerians and international observers as disastrous. The 2023 general election is being described in similar vein, with allegations of vote rigging, incompetence of election management and officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3125,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/3125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}