The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has rejected in its entirety the notion and idea from the European Union, foreign and local organizations, groups, and individuals remotely suggesting that the 2023 election which produced President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was fraudulent.
INEC reiterated that Tinubu the candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) clearly and fairly won and there is no substantial evidence provided by the European Union or others that is viable enough to impeach the integrity of the election outcomes.
According to INEC, what EU-EOM called the final report on the recent elections was a product of a poorly done desk job that relied heavily on a few instances of skirmishes in less than 1000 polling units out of over 176,000 where Nigerians voted on election day.
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“We have many reasons to believe the jaundiced report, based on the views of fewer than 50 observers, was to merely sustain the same premature denunciatory stance contained in the EU’s preliminary report released in March,” the statement from INEC National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Mr. Festus Okoye added.
INEC stated that it came out to defend the integrity of the election by rejecting the false narratives in the EU report as well as asking the EU how it reached the conclusions in its submitted final report with the very limited coverage of the elections by their observers who, without doubt, relied more on rumours, hearsay, cocktails of prejudiced and uninformed social media commentaries and opposition talking heads.
The commission said the 2023 general elections, especially the presidential election, won by Tinubu were credible, peaceful, free, fair and the best organized general elections in Nigeria since 1999.
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“Now that the organization has submitted what it claimed to be its final report on the elections, we can now categorically let Nigerians and the entire world know that we were not unaware of the machinations of the European Union to sustain its, largely, unfounded bias and claims on the election outcomes.
“It is worth restating that the limitation of the EU final assessment and conclusions on our elections was made very bare in the text of the press conference addressed by the Head of its Electoral Observation Mission, Barry Andrews. While addressing journalists in Abuja on the so-called final report, Andrews noted that EU-EOM monitored the pre-election and post-election processes in Nigeria from January 11 to April 11, 2023, as an INEC-accredited election monitoring group.
“Within this period, EU-EOM observed the elections through 11 Abuja-based analysts, and 40 election observers spread across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. With the level of the personnel deployed, which was barely an average of one person per state, we wonder how EU-EOM independently monitored elections in over 176,000 polling units across Nigeria.”
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The electoral umpire maintained that the technology-aided 2023 general elections were the most transparent and best organized since the return of civil rule in Nigeria which was validated by all non-partisan foreign and local observers such as the African Union, ECOWAS, Commonwealth Observer Mission, and the Nigerian Bar Association.
“Unlike EU-EOM which deployed fewer than 50 observers, the Nigerian Bar Association which sent out over 1000 observers spread across the entire country for the same election gave a more holistic and accurate assessment of the elections in their report.
“NBA, an organization of eminent lawyers and an important voice within the civic space, reported that 91.8 per cent of Nigerians rated the conduct of the national and state elections as credible and satisfactory. Any election that over 90% of the citizens considered transparent should be celebrated anywhere in the world.”
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INEC further stated that it is open to learning and continuous improvements, and is also committed to taking on board more ideas, innovations, and reforms that will further enhance the integrity and credibility of our electoral process.
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