· Says Nigeria’s law only recognises manual transmission of election results
As litigation is about to commence in charges filed by the presidential candidates of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi respectively, the federal government has dismissed allegations that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) compromised with the results as it reneged from the provisions of both the Electoral Act 2022 and INEC guideline on transmission of election results.
It would be recalled that the agents of the PDP, LP and six other political parties, staged a walk – out at the International Conference Centre (ICC) venue of the Presidential election result collation centre, following the rejection by INEC of their insistence that the collation of election results should be discontinued until INEC uploads the result collected at the polling units to the result viewing centre as it had promised before the election.
Both PDP and Labour Party, Action Alliance (A A) and Allied Peoples Movement (APM) with their presidential candidates are currently challenging the outcome of the February 25 presidential election at the Election Petitions tribunal.
Defending the conduct of INEC, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said Nigeria’s law at the moment recognises only manual transmission of results, as against the electronics which was contained in the Electoral Act, and which INEC had repeatedly promised to use.
INEC had severally assured Nigerians of its readiness to conduct a free, fair and transparent election, using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and electronic transmission of results from the polling units to the result viewing portal (IReV), to ensure that only true polling unit results are uploaded.
But while the BVAS failed in several polling units, INEC only transmitted results of the National assembly election, which it alleged that some technical glitches were responsible for the non transmission of the presidential election results.
Mohammed, who spoke when he visited some international media organization in the United States of America, said the allegation of fraud being bandied by the opposition is a result of ignorance of how the process works.
He explained further that the election umpire “withheld” the uploading of presidential election results “to preserve the integrity of the data.”
“Under our laws today, management of election results is manual and the court has ruled that INEC has the exclusive right to determine the mode of election, its collation and transmission.
“What happened on the 25th of February was that INEC observed that the results of the presidential elections were not being viewed. INEC, suspecting a cyber attack, withheld the uploading of the results to preserve the integrity of the data.
“It immediately proceeded to float an alternative platform while asking its technicians to investigate what happened to its original portal.”
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the minister said that with conduct of the 2023 elections, President Muhammadu Buhari has delivered on his pledge to leave behind a legacy of free, fair and credible elections.
In his speech at the United Nations general assembly (UNGA77) in September 2022, Buhari promised to stay committed to the “sanctity of constitutional term limits” by leaving “a process of credible elections through which Nigerians elect leaders of their choice”.
Lai Mohammed said in fulfilment of this promise, the president ensured nobody used security agencies to rig the elections.
“Proof of this resolution is that the president’s party lost the presidential election in Katsina, his home state. Equally, the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, lost in his state, Lagos, while the chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu, lost in Nasarawa state to the Labour Party
“The director-general of the campaign organisation of our party also lost to PDP in Plateau state. Nothing gives this election more credence than those facts because there was no rigging in states where our bigwigs come from,” Lai Mohammed was quoted to have said.