18 Local Observers Give Credence To Presidential, NASS Elections

Amidst the controversies and criticisms trailing the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections, eighteen local observers have given credence to the polls, which the Presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The local observers are: Youth Sustainable Dev Foundation, Future Leaders Global Initiatives, Patrotic Women Foundation,Foundation For Economic Empowerment and Educational Development (Feed Africa Foundation), Grassroot Dev Centre For Peace and Social Justice, Grassroot Development and Peace Initiative, United Nigeria Peace, Centre For Grassroot Dev and Crime Prevention, International Organisation for Sustainable Development and Youth Education on Human Rights and Civic Responsibilities.

Others are: Centre For Gender and Youth Civic Education, Your Voice Initiative, Women For Better Life Initiative, The People’s Care and Advocacy Initiative, Global Policy Advocacy and Leadership Initiative, Centre For Childcare and Youth Development, Erhuvwuoghene Girls Right Foundation and She4she Initiative.

The Observers who briefed the media in Abuja on Thursday titled their statement: “INEC has saved Nigeria from the Shame of fraudulent elections”.

Reading their text, the lead speaker, Comrade Safiya Ibrahim Ogoh of the
Patriotic Women Foundation, said, “our organisation (National Observers Group) is a duly accredited election observer by the Independent National Electoral Commission (NEC).

“We affirm that we monitored the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25th, 2023, across the country and we state that the election despite the few challenges around the late deployment of election materials in some locations passed the test of integrity and transparency

“We deployed 2,000 observers and were present in 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) for the purpose of the election – pre-election, election day and result collation.

“We are satisfied with the general conduct of the election by INEC and the security agencies especially the Police which is the lead security agency. The election was peaceful throughout the country with few incidents of violence reported in Rivers, Edo and Eti-Osa in Lagos.

“We observed that Nigerians who came out were able to vote because the Police and the Army provided the adequate security cover.

“The result of the elections as declared by INEC reflect the wish of Nigerians and are in tandem with many non-partisan pre-election forecasts for the leading four Presidential candidates.

“Without any shred of doubt, INEC conducted a free, fair and credible election. The accreditation and voting process with BVAS worked very well across the country with over 85% success rate.

“While it is true that INEC didn’t immediately upload the results from polling units on the IReV portal as earlier announced, it is important to state that all political parties through their agents have signed copies of the results.

“Several governors including those of Cross River, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, and Yobe among others lost their states to the other parties. Some lost senatorial contests.

“Nobody has queried the election result in Katsina for example.”

However, it would be recalled that the Presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart, Peter Obi of the Labour Party have gone to court to challenge the result of the election as announced by the electoral umpire.