The preponderance of positive reports from local and International elections observers on the February 25 election shows that the process is far more credible than what opposition parties want Nigerians to believe.
The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) in a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke observed that it is an affirmation of the improvement in Nigeria’s electoral process on the watch of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Since the completion of the first set of election and the declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the country had been awash with post-election claims of electoral fraud by the opposition parties.
“This is largely as a result of the glitch that led to the failure to upload election results real time on the IREV from the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS).
“But judging from the post-election reports for many of the international observer groups, the glitch is not enough to discredit the election even though they acknowledged it.
“According to the Independent Foreign Observers Mission, it is the most transparent elections in the country’s recent history with significant candidates recording victories and defeats.
“The group specifically noted that incidences of vote buying were minimal as a result of the naira redesign policy of the Buhari administration and added that the accreditation process was different and better than what the country had in the past.
“The Commonwealth, African Union and ECOWAS missions, for their part, admitted that the election was better than previous ones and made a case for early voting for electoral officials as well as ‘ongoing training of technical and ad-hoc staff to professionally handle and resolve issues related to the use of BVAS machines’.
“For the EU and NDI, lack of public information on the newly introduced election technologies (BVAS and IREV) diminished expectations and left room for speculation which INEC was not quick to respond to”, the statement added.
The group also noted that virtually all the observer missions were not impressed with the post-election comments of the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party.
“Just like many Nigerians, international observers including the AU mission led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki have been swift to urge aggrieved candidates and parties to seek the legal option rather than lay the groundwork for violence.
“We are aware that the EU which made a similar call had also noted that the first sets of Presidential election result sheets were uploaded after 10 pm on election day, to outline the challenge INEC faced.
“But in the words of the foreign observers, allegations of infractions or switch of results are based on speculation and not facts on the ground.
“And we dare add that since the Commission began to upload scanned results sheets belatedly, none of the opposition parties have been able to discountenance any of the results with copies handed to their agents at each of the over 170,000 polling units where actual voting took place.
“We hope that at the end, the parties and their supporters will be courageous enough to admit that they were too quick to question the outcome of the Presidential election because of their poor understanding of the collation process”.
BMO says it is convinced that, aside the IREV glitches, the 2023 election will go down in history as the best in recent history.
