…SAYS ANYTHING LESS THAN THAT IS A VIOLATION
The Transition Monitoring Group, TMG, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to as a matter of urgency stick to the spirit of the provision of the Electoral Act, as signed by President Mohammadu Buhari.
The group demands that the Commission provides clarity on its recent pronouncement to assuage the suspicions of the electorate and rebuild their confidence to exercise their rights to vote.
The group reminded the INEC to ensure that whatever actions they are taking in the run-up to the elections do not run in violation of the provisions of the Act.
The Chairman of the TMG, Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani), in a statement on Sunday, said the Commission’s alleged statement to transmit the election result manually was questionable and suspicious.
“Actions of this nature tend to stir public suspicions and rightly so considering Nigeria’s long history of electoral fraud.
“The TMG will like to note that this action holds grave potential towards eroding the confidence of Nigerian voters which has just only been recently inspired by the Act and its provisions, key of which is the electronic transmission process and disregards the efforts of the general public who have fought long and hard for improvements in our electoral process.
“Given the statement by the National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee that while the collation process of results is still essentially manual, the collation officer must collate subject to his verification and confirmation that the number of accredited voters stated on the collated result is correct and consistent with the number of accredited voters recorded and transmitted directly from polling units, there are key questions to be asked.
“Why then does the Commission need to collate manually if the electronic transmission figures will prevail? We cannot afford to take two steps back for every step forward that we take.
“The TMG demands that the Commission provides clarity on its recent pronouncement to assuage the suspicions of the electorate and rebuild their confidence to exercise their rights to vote.
“The INEC should further seek to ensure that whatever actions are taken forward in the run-up to the elections do not run in violation of the provisions of the Act.” The statement reads.
According to the TMG, on the conclusion of the voter registration exercise on 31 July 2022, Nigeria added more than 12 million new voters to its election register most of who are youths.
The TMG said that the voters register has increased from 84,000,484 recorded as of the last 2019 election cycle, to 96,299,428.
“These new figures are in part credited to the long-sought electoral reforms recently enacted by the President, which were largely championed by Nigerian citizens and well-wishers
“One can therefore allude that the confidence of Nigerian voters was bolstered by the recent electoral reforms and the seeming willingness of the Commission and government of the day to embrace electoral transparency and integrity.
“It is thus worrisome that the news making the rounds is a decision by the electoral body to conduct manual collation of results.” The statement added.
The Chairman of the TMG, however, stated that for the avoidance of doubt, one of the key features of the new Electoral Act towards improving the integrity of the electoral process was the introduction of the Bimordial Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) which captures three stages of the voting process.
According to him, it acts as the Voter Enrolment Bimordial (IVED) during voter registration, performs the voter accreditation on an election day, and as INEC Results Viewing Device (IReV Device) to be used for election results upload on an election day.
“However, while the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), acknowledges the marked difference between the transfer and transmission of results and the collation of results, as well as provisions of the Act- Section 50(2) of the Electoral Act, 2022 which gives the commission the absolute discretion to determine the mode and procedure of voting in an election and the transmission of election results, we wish to express our dissatisfaction with the discretionary decision to collate results manually after transmitting electronically
“Actions of this nature tend to stir public suspicions and rightly so considering Nigeria’s long history of electoral fraud.
“The TMG will like to note that this action holds grave potential towards eroding the confidence of Nigerian voters which has just only been recently inspired by the Act and its potential, key of which is the electronic transmission process and disregards the efforts of the general public who have fought long and hard for improvements in our electoral process
“Given the statement by the National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee that while the collation process of results is still essentially manual, the collation officer must collate subject to his verification and the confirmation that the number of accredited voters stated on the collated result is correct and consistent with the number of accredited voters recorded and transmitted directly from polling units, three key questions to be asked
“Why then does the Commission need to collate manually if the electronic transmission figures will prevail? We cannot afford to take two steps back for every step forward that we take” The Group queried.
