Observers pick holes in the on going 2023 presidential elections

An Observer group known as International Leadership Initiative as well as a Coalition of INEC Accredited Observers for the 2023 general elections have faulted security agencies for not living up to expectations in the ongoing Presidential elections.

They faulted in specific terms the Nigerian Police and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC), for not being on ground to check the excesses of politicians and their collaborators.

Speaking at a press briefing in Jos on Monday, leader of the group, Prince Jedidiah Bisong said before the election, the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alikali Baba promised a safe and secured environment.

Bisong said contrary to the promise of the Inspector General of Police, Nigerians can attest to records of violence and insecurities in many polling centers.

“This can only mean that the number of security personnel in every polling unit is not enough or otherwise, many polling units had only one security personnel, while some polling units had no security personnel even during the voting exercise”, Bisong said.

He gave other reasons for irregularities of the election process to be INEC sending text messages to voters on election day informing them of change of polling units.

‘Some voters received text from NEC on election day for change of polling units and as such, voting was made difficult for Nigerians. One instance is the PDP governorship candidate. Bar. Caleb Mutfwang who received a text message from INEC on election day for change of polling unit.

“Some of the polling units reported to have the names of some political parties omitted in the ballot papers, as well as some polling units reported to have less ballot papers compared to the number of registered voters”, he said.

The Observers also gave logistics as one of the shortcomings of INEC, saying that INEC officials and the ADHOC staff arrived late at most polling units due to insufficient vehicles to  transport the officials to their various posts of duties.

BVAS functionality and uploading of results were one of the hitches sighted by the Observers as lapses from INEC.

According to them: “Some of the voter’s cards were not recognised by the BVAS but their names were found in the print out documents provided and thus were not allowed to vote”.

On uploading of results Bisong said: “There was no real time for results upload in virtually 70 per cent of the polling units. Most results were uploaded offline since there were issues with the INEC result viewing portal”, he said.