The recently released report of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) to Nigeria on the 2019 general elections continued yesterday to attract different interpretations.
While the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in what looked like a sober reflection, said yesterday that it had resolved to review party registration guidelines, proponents of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) said the report (considered damning in some quarters) had vindicated the party and INEC.
The EU EOM specifically described the elections as marred by severe “operational and transparency shortcomings” but said, in response to a question from a journalist, that it had to rely on the results provided by INEC.
The EU EOM had, at the weekend, faulted the election processes, saying only few of its post-2015 election recommendations were implemented in the last poll.
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The Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON) and card-carrying member of the APC, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, said the report vindicated the position of some members of the party that INEC did not generate results of the 2019 elections from a server. He said the report put to rest the lingering controversy on the subject. “Some of us have been vindicated, as our position has been that INEC did not generate the 2019 general elections result from a server,” he said.
According to him, “We have maintained that it’s trite in law that one cannot build something out of nothing; accordingly, we agree with the EU election observer mission’s denial of knowledge of the existence of the so-called server used by INEC to conduct the 2019 general elections.”
Okechukwu said it was amusing how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) argued that INEC conducted elections transparently in Adamawa, Bauchi, Imo, Oyo, Zamfara etc where it won but manipulated results in the areas it lost.
“Methinks, it’s wrong to gloss over the truism that President Muhammadu Buhari has a 12 million vote-bank on display in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, and in the 2019 presidential elections.