Ahead of the March 11 gubernatorial polls, Connected Development CODE, a Civil Society Organisation has appealed to the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, to ensure all challenges observed in previous elections are addressed.
The Chief Executive Officer of CODE Mallam Hamzat Lawal, gave the advice when he presented an interim report of the just concluded presidential and National Assembly election in Abuja.
Analysing the election proceedings, Lawal said report from its UZABE platform revealed some irregularities in the Conduct of the election, which he believed INEC can address before the coming governorship election.
He emphasized that Nigerians are fast loosing confidence in the nation’s electoral process, based on their complaints and observations which INEC refused to recognize.
” We observed that in many of such polling units, INEC staff and materials were not deployed to these areas, like in Imo state primary health care development agency, New Owerri 1, PU 0I8, and as such citizens again were disenfranchised”.
“The deployment of BVAS and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) were presented to Nigerians as game changers in this 2023 general election and we observed that citizens found it difficult to log in to the IREV until late in the day of election”.
“The IREV failed to upload any result of the Presidential election as at 10pm of election day, and even when the results started uploading, it was in trickles”.
At this moment, 4 days after the Saturday Presidential Election, only 85% of the results have been uploaded, this is in sharp contrast to all the promise and assurance given by INEC”.
Lawal however urged INEC to ensure transparency of the result management and collation process and make certain that polling unit results are uploaded timely on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV).
Reporting by Julian Osamoto