The European Union Election Observation Mission to Nigeria has released its first preliminary statement on the presidential and House of assembly elections which took place across every state in Nigeria on Saturday, the 25th of February adding that it generally lacked transparency, thus reducing trust in the whole electoral process.
In the statement, the observers commended the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for ensuring that the elections were held on schedule despite the challenging environment.
“INEC’s operational capacity was hampered by the ongoing fuel and naira shortage, insecurity prevented it from accessing some local government areas notably in the South,” the statement read.
According to foreign observers, despite the prevailing challenges, stakeholders who had prior to the election expressed confidence in INEC’s professionalism, independence and voter information efforts were largely disappointed after the elections.
“INEC lacked efficient planning and transparency during critical stages of the electoral process, while on election day trust in inec was seen to further reduce due to delayed polling processes and information gaps related to much anticipated access to results on its Results Viewing Portals, IReV.
“The introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditations System, BVAS, and the IReV for the elections was perceived as an important step to ensure the integrity and credibility of elections. However, delayed training of technical personnel, an inadequate mock testing exercise, and a lack of public information on the election technologies diminished expectations and left room for speculation and uncertainty,” the EU Observers stated.
The European Union Observers further stated; “During the early stages of collation, presidential result from polling units were not displayed on the IReV, while Senate and House of Representative results were slowly published. Presidential election result forms started to be uploaded after 10PM on election day, raising concerns and reaching only 20 per cent by noon on 26 February. Later the same evening, INEC explained the delay with “technical hitches.”