What’s happening in Nigeria’s disputed presidential election? | Tellwell Newspaper
Tellwell Newspaper, Abuja – Nigeria:
By Joel Olatunde AGOI
Former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu was declared the winner of Nigeria’s keenly contested presidential election, but the victory of the ruling party candidate is being disputed by the opposition.
Africa’s most populous nation has a long history of election malpractice, vote fraud and violence during ballots.
Officials hoped new technology would make the February 25 election the cleanest yet, but technical hitches, long delays and slow results have fuelled accusations of fraud.
– Why is the vote disputed? –
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) introduced biometric voter identification technology for the first time at the national level and IReV, a central database for uploading results in real time to improve transparency.
But many polling stations opened very late, causing delays in the registration of voters and discouraging some from casting a ballot altogether.
After voting finished and manual counts were done, several electoral staff reported difficulties in uploading results on IReV and some results were transmitted at collation centres instead of directly at the polling units.
A day after the critical election, results from only around 35,900 polling stations for the presidential election had been uploaded on the INEC website — just 20 percent of the 176,000 total.
In some cases, uploaded images of results were very blurry, smudged and illegible.
That, along with the slow uploading and late start in voting, has fuelled fears of fraud and vote-rigging.
– What do observers say? –
Local and foreign observers said voting was mostly peaceful but noted polling stations opened late and technical problems disrupted uploading tallies from the polling stations to a central website.
“INEC lacked efficient planning and transparency during critical stages of the electoral process, while on election day trust in INEC was seen to further reduce due to delayed polling processes and information gaps,” an EU mission said.
It also noted “chaotic, disorganised and tense conditions at generally overcrowded collation centres”.
The US-based IRI-NDI observer group noted that a combination of logistics, insecurity, electronic result transfer issues and lack of transparency “disenfranchised Nigerian voters in many parts of the country”.
“Nigerians needed the elections to be conducted freely and fairly to bolster trust in their new leader, and in the independence of the country’s institutions. These elections failed to deliver in this sense,” a diplomat in Abuja told AFP.
The INEC admitted some technical glitches but insisted the process was free and fair.
– What does the law say? –
Under the 2022 Electoral Act which was approved to improve free, fair, credible and transparent elections in Nigeria, results were expected to be transmitted to the INEC portal immediately after the votes were manually collated at every polling unit.
But on Saturday, presiding officers at various polling units and even later at local collation centres said they could not transmit the results, especially those of the presidential election, through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, equipment issued to the officers for such purpose.
Many Nigerians expected to follow the gradual publication of results online, but the portal was very slow to update.
This caused confusion and anger, though the law does not require electronic results to be published before the official results are declared.
– What do the leaders say? –
The Labour Party’s vice presidential candidate said they were determined to fight through all legal and peaceful means the outcome of the election, which they say was in “clear violation” of INEC rules.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday urged opposition parties to seek peaceful means of addressing their grievances such as the courts.
“That is not to say the exercise was without fault,” Buhari said on Twitter.
“There were technical problems with electronic transmission of the results. Of course, there will be areas that need work to bring further transparency and credibility to the voting procedure.”
Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has appealed to his rivals with a call for cooperation.
AFP
