A non-governmental organisation, Hallowmace Foundation has described the Presidential and National Assembly elections held last week across Nigeria as an exercise that lacks credibility. While praising Nigerians for trooping out en masse to participate in the polls and for demonstrating enthusiasm and maintaining peace, the Foundation said the outcomes of the elections in many respects fell far short of the expectations of Nigerians and the international community.
In a release signed by the Executive Director of the Foundation, Sunny Anderson Osiebe, which was made available to media houses, Monday, in Abuja, the Foundation, an INEC-accredited Observer Organisation in the elections, said it deployed its staff during the elections to the entire 109 Senatorial and 360 House of Representatives collation centres across the country and had, in conjunction with other partners, undertaken several field trips and activities to voting venues and result-collation centres.
According to Mr Osiebe:
"Following what Hallowmace Foundation and partners gathered from the field and the pieces of information that had come in from our 24-hour round-the-clock phone-in radio programmes at the Armed Forces Radio, Abuja, we have completed a comprehensive analysis of what took place across the country in the Presidential and National Assembly elections.;
"As part of our observations, movement of electoral materials, both sensitive and non-sensitive ones, including the deployment of human elements, still remains a big challenge to INEC and the Nigerian electoral process. INEC is advised to work on the above, especially, in the forthcoming Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections;
"It is public knowledge that, either through the ineptitude of INEC (Ad Hoc) staff, the willingness to undermine the electoral process or both, using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine, the use of this machine in line with the promises made by INEC to Nigerians by the election management body, was a grand deception of Nigerians;
"This act of deception was enough reason to throw the whole country into chaos and disarray. To this end, the claims of INEC on the BVAS must be subjected to expert verification. We recommend that any sabotage in the use or misuse of the BVAS must be punished. Thanks to the resilient maturity of Nigerians on the day of the elections, the issue of the BVAS was actually a trigger to the kind of chaos that was calmly avoided by the leaders of the political parties, alongside other Nigerians. Added to this is the need to reconsider the contract INEC has entered into with the manufacturers of the BVAS machine. There are words on the grapevine that point to a possible breach of contractual terms in this regard;
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"It is still surprising to note that the availability of the so-called BVAS could not stop the wanton thumb-printing and senseless rigging that had characterised the Presidential and National Assembly elections. Cases of over-voting and voting without accreditation were rife during the last elections;
"For a Commission that had before the election informed the world that it had weeded out over 2.7 underaged voters registered on its portals, it was quite disheartening to witness cases where boys who were barely ten years old still queued to vote in last week's elections. INEC must do more in this area in order to up the integrity of its process;
"As a member of the Civil Society, I know that this may not go down well with everyone, but suffice it to say that those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear! A situation where in some observed cases candidates for elections register CSOs at INEC for Observer Status in Constituencies where they are standing for elective offices is to say the list is condemnable. Going forward, INEC must strengthen its internal mechanisms for qualifying for this partnership by civil society groups;
"But for pockets of cases of infractions here and there, especially, where they had aided candidates and political parties to commit electoral offences, the general conduct of our security agencies was quite commendable. In any case, a very strong orientation for members of these agencies is strongly canvassed here. Anyone who has been found complicit in any matters involving our elections should be severy punished,
Mr Osiebe, also, said that other areas of issues like unavailability of result sheets, missing names and logos and issues surrounding the relocation of voters as well as others were all cases that constantly called for attention at voting venues. He commended members of the general public for conducting themselves well for the elections. He said the conduct of the Nigerian electorate was one that shows that the people were maturing through the democratic process and called on them to again demonstrate that maturity in the forthcoming State Gubernatorial and Assembly elections this Saturday.
