The Executive Director of the International Organization for Peace Building and Social Justice, Ishaya Inuwa Durkwa has insisted on the investigation of the 2023 General Election before the declaration of a winner.
This was contained in a press statement from the International Organization for Peace Building and Social Justice (PSJ) and International Committee on Nigeria (ICON) in which Ishaya Inuwa stated that there are serious concerns and allegations raised about violations that occurred during the 2023 Elections held in Nigeria on Saturday, 25th February, 2023.
He said it is a moral duty to investigate in order to avert a looming danger that could tip the country over the edge.
The statement further reads: “Independent National Electoral Committee (INEC), as the electoral umpire, assured Nigerians on numerous occasions that it was prepared to conduct a free, fair and credible election. The trust Nigerians built on that promised was witnessed by mass voter registration and massive turn out of voters at the polls.”
While, to some extent, the usual ballot snatching and violence may not have been abnormal, but the pulse of the masses and party agents (at polling units, ward level and collation centre at the national level), suggests a cruel fraud in the entire conduct of the elections.
Key issues from the beginning of voting are:
1. Late arrival of INEC staff; in many cases till 3:00pm for a process that was to start at 8:00am. Some voters had to call and arrange logistics to move INEC staff.
2. Failure of BIVAS machines, which slowed down the process and left a majority of voters waiting. At the end, it was observed that over 60% of voters in many polling units did not get to cast their votes.
3. Arrival of INEC staff without Form EC8A to record results at polling unit. Many electoral officers claimed they were not issued and some only went back to get them after pressure from electorates.
4. Failure to upload results to INEC for easy access on iReV.
5. Cases of intimidating certain ethnicities to either vote a particular candidate or return to their homes without voting, with resultant injuries on many.
6. Video evidence of underage voters.
7. Video evidence of voting without use of BIVAS, where few individuals were seen fingerprinting bunch of ballot papers.
8. Manual transmission of results as against what was agreed.
9. The results were not fully uploaded up to the end of the collation at the Nation Collation Centre.
10. Even the results uploaded on the iRev were full of errors, for example, you could log into the result of a particular polling station and find a picture or the result of another polling unit from another state entirely.
11. That there were calls at the National Collation Centre by the political parties for the collation to be suspended until all the results are successfully uploaded and accessed by political parties to enable them compare the results with was is being submitted by the various state collation officers of the election (scope) but their requests were ignored.
Although these issues were raised at the national collation centre by several political party agents, the manual transmission of the election continues. EU, US , AU and other observers have expressed their concerns on the failure of INEC to meet with even its own set standards. We find it crucial at this moment to raise attention to the flaws of the process, which has become glaring and undermines the entire election, but poses a cataclysmic threat on the survival of democracy and the very peace and existence of the nation Nigeria. There are many suspicions that the electoral umpire is working to pronounce a result that does not reflect the will of the masses and if that is the case, is insensitive to the attendant consequence of it.
a. The electoral umpire indeed went ahead with the transmission of the results and pronounce a candidate winner, who might not necessarily be the people’s choice.
b. State powers might be used to supress any fair contest in the court or any peaceful protest rejecting the flawed process.
c. With the already volatile security state of the country, the abuse of state powers as seen during campaign, where opposition faced attacks until the DSS threatened to enforce order by themselves, no one could guarantee the credibility of the outcome of any pronouncement of a winner from the process that is already flawed.
At the moment, Nigerians have a democracy to protect and the very existence of a democratic nation is on the edge. We therefore sue for peace and call on President Muhammadu Buhari, as a matter of utmost urgency, to assuage the feelings of Nigerian voters and begin work of investigating these allegations and incidents. There should not be a hand over the mantle of leadership to the any President elect. Instead, summon a council of State, with all former heads of State, former service chiefs, elder statesmen, religious and royal fathers, to brainstorm and prevail on INEC not to subvert the will of the people.
Our country is in a dire need of healing at this critical time, we therefore urge the current President and INEC to start putting machinery in place to reach out to work towards an understanding and rebuild a broken nation.
Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Faithfully,
Ishaya Inuwa Durkwa
Executive Director
International Organization for
Peace Building and Social Justice
