Index to Nigerian Newspapers

Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of cloning electoral fraudsters as leaders and wasting the time and resources of the country. In their final address filed before the Presidential Election Petitions Court dated July 23, 2023, Obi and LP warned that if the court fails to whip INEC into line to do its electoral duties fairly, impartially and independently, elections in Nigeria will remain a fraud.

Obi and LP accused INEC of abandoning its primary statutory responsibility of being an electoral umpire; and proudly, put on the toga of a candidate in the election it conducted. They said INEC tragically and embarrassingly, spent 5.5 pages of its address defending the ground on the non-qualification of 2nd respondent (Tinubu). Obi further submitted that pursuant to the mandatory provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022, the INEC Regulations and Guidelines, and INEC Manual, INEC introduced the use of modern technology for the conduct of the 2023 General election.

“By this, INEC represented and assured that it would use Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the accreditation of voters in the polling units and the upload/transmission of the results of the election in real-time on the day of the election to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV). “However, contrary to the requirement of the law and in manifest disregard of its own representations, the 1st respondent (INEC) abandoned and discarded the much expected upload/transmission of the result of the election in real time on the day of the election from the polling unit to the IReV.

“Rather, and very strangely, blurred, unreadable and inaccessible documents/images were uploaded by the 1st respondent to the IReV purporting same to be the result of the election in various polling units. These blurred images and inaccessible documents were purported to be the result of the election in the polling units. The net result of the upload of the blurred images on the IReV, was that the result of the election could neither be authenticated nor verified, and thus, lacked credibility and transparency.