The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has said that Nigerians should not judge the commission based on the glitch experienced in the upload of the February 25 presidential election held across the country.
The EU chief Observer, Barry Andrews, said public condience in INEC was severely damaged in the February 25 Felection due to the commission’s operational failures and lack of transparency.
Andrews said some corrective measures introduced in the March 18 governorship elections seemed to have had a positive effect but overall, trust was not restored and this led to civil societies to call for an independent audit of the entire process. The EU observation team made 6 priority recommendations.
While reacting to the final report on the 2023 general elections submitted by the European Union Election Observation Mission on Monday, June 26, INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye, urged Nigerians not to judge the electoral empire as a result of the challenge the commission experienced in the upload of the presidential election.
“It is not fair to judge the entire performance of the commission on the basis of a glitch in the result upload for the presidential election,” he said.
According to Okoye, the law has empowered political parties to know what goes on at the polling units.
“Almost all the political parties nominated and got accredited at least over 170,000 polling agents. What that means is that they had primary evidence of the results from the polling units. It is those results from the polling units, together with the BVAS as a machine itself that goes to the collation centre. So, it is not true for a political party to rely only on result upload in order to get the evidence with which it wants to prosecute its case in court,” he added