The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has described apologising to Nigerians over the widespread hiccups that characterised the February 25 elections as a nonissue. INEC said politicians and political parties also should be blamed for its subpar performance.
The Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party have accused the ruling All Progressives of violence, voter intimidation and electoral fraud. The APC made its allegations of rigging against the PDP and Labour Party.
INEC said it was unhappy over its failure to upload the presidential election results in its server in real-time while blaming political parties and politicians for the outcome.
Asked if the commission would apologise to Nigerians for failing to upload the election results, Festus Okoye, spokesman for INEC, said, “The issue of apology or no apology does not arise. We have made it very clear that we are not happy with what happened with result upload on February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.”
The INEC official added, “We as a responsible organisation have taken steps to rectify some of the challenges we had and made sure that going into March 18 governorship and state assembly elections, such issues do not reoccur”
Mr Okoye stated this on Channels TV Sunday night.
Blaming political parties and politicians, Mr Okoye said, “Let me make it clear that the conduct of (the) election is a multi-stakeholder venture. Yes, we are at the receiving end now, but the political parties have their own role to play to make sure we have a good electoral process.”
Mr Okoye noted that “it is some of the political parties and some of their candidates that made the atmosphere at the polling unit inaccessible in such a way that voters cannot” have a good voting experience on election day.
He added, “So we need to also talk to the political parties to talk to their agents to abide by the code of conduct and the peace accord they have signed so that Nigerians can go to polling units on election day without challenges and so that our officials can deploy and deploy without any fear and any arm befalling them.”
INEC had promised to upload election results in real-time using BVAS devices to IReV.
On election day, the upload of the results of the presidential elections was sporadic, with INEC claiming technical glitches.
