The Independent National Electoral Commission on Thursday raised fears
that the results and data of the 1999 and 2003 general elections were
missing.
The commission, however, said researchers did not find
it difficult to trace the 2019 general election results which were
already online.
INEC National Commissioner on Election and Party
Monitoring, Prof. Anthonia Okosi-Simbina, stated this at a one-day
workshop to look at the proposed compendium of the results of 2007, 2011
and 2015 general elections, organised by the Nigerian Institute Of
Social And Economic Research in Ibadan, Oyo State.
According to
her, the programme focused on preparing a compendium of 2007, 2011 and
2015 general elections results because data of the results of the 1999
and the 2003 general elections were not available.
She said, “We want people to get the statistics of the voters; the women, the men, artisans and the rural dwellers.
“If
political parties follow the demographics, they will be able to know
their targets during political campaigns. It will also help the
government in the provision of essential things. It will also help INEC
too.
“It was difficult to get that of 1999 and 2003; much of the
data were not made available because it was scattered in various offices
but the 2019 data was not like that because we had a better way of
storing them and it’s online.
“The recommendation is that the results of elections should be released in a more organized manner.”
Also
speaking was a National Commissioner and Chairman, Board of The
Electoral Institute, Prince Solomon Soyebi, who said they have
interrogated the results of the elections.
He stated that INEC
was trying its best to ensure that the results of all the elections from
1999 were available online, adding that lessons learnt in those
elections would help in future polls.
“Results of the 2019
general election is on our website. It is separated based on sex, rural
setting and other demographics. From the 2019 general election, we can
now show the state with the highest votes,” Soyebi said.