Wants results published on INEC website

… Advocates adoption of electronic transmission of results

By Emmanuel Elebeke & Chris Ochayi

ABUJA: 29-8-19: Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD has described the just concluded 2019 general elections as the most chaotic ever in the nation’s democratic history.

The CDD Director, Hassan Idayat gave the verdict in a postmortem report on 2019 election collation presented  at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, on Thursday.

She said their findings showed that the electoral umpire, INEC  was clearly less transparent in the 2019 elections than in 2015 and 2011.

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From CDD’s ward-level collation monitoring effort, she explained that ward-level collation disruptions and manipulations gave opportunistic political parties and individual candidates opportunities to dispute the outcome and legitimacy of elections, especially in Nigeria 5 most politically contentious wards, with such disputes frequently exacerbating local political tensions, empowered local political thugs and even help fuel long-running communal conflicts.

Idayat, who expressed shock over the continued delay of result publication by INEC on its website vowed to explore the Freedom of Information Act, FOI to get INEC make the poll results public, which according to her ought to have been done earlier to enable observers compare notes when writing their reports.

‘‘The fact must be told that this is the most chaotic  collation process we have witnessed, we saw areas where people were at dagger-drawn fighting over the just concluded  elections; we saw  where elections were disrupted  by state actors and non  state actors; we witnessed a lot of intimidation of  not just our observers, media  and collation officers.

‘‘One of the most noticeable and avoidabIe-missteps INEC has made following the 2019 election is its refusal to publish detailed election results to its website. INEC has only published national-level totals for the 2019 presidential election, choosing to keep sub-national results data hidden from public view. This opaque approach reverses the tangible-albeit Incomplete-progress on results transparency that accompanied the 2011 and 2015 elections.

‘‘All these thwart the integrity of an election. Election is not just about outcome, I think  what we should get right as a country is not to be laying emphasis on the outcome but process that led to this outcome are very key.

‘‘As long as we adopt electronic transition of result, it will make things better and electronic transmission should be from the polling unit level to the final level, such that everything is clear, and human contact is further reduced.’’

The CDD boss who identified poor management of logistics as one of the challenges that affected the credibility of the polls, said the situation paved way for manipulation of the election process.

She assured that CDD, on its part will explore the FOI to get INEC publish the poll results which ought to have helped observers in writing their reports.

‘‘One of the key observations is poor logistic management. When things are not done the way they should be done, it allows for manipulations. In the last election, we witnessed a lot of intimidation if collation staff, observers and media by the security agencies, political parties thugs.

‘‘In order to have free, faire and credible elections, all these must stop and must not rear its ugly head in the Kogi and Bayelsa and other off circle elections before we get to the 2023 elections. One of the key observations is poor logistic management. These kind of actions where we did not put enough eyes, we did not do things the way they are, even doing the work is missing.

‘‘The transparency that was meant to come out of the process didn’t come out from the election. This was an election where we witnessed many collation officers disappearing for more than 20 hours in several of the ward collation centres.  Some on their own, aside from people who were not aware of where the collation places were meant to be, some on their own chose to circumvent the process,  not where there were insecurity and in several areas, we saw there were so much incompetency that some results that were be declare incompetent in petition were  declared competent because of arithmetical error occurred in terms of the collation on the whole.’’

From the findings, the report indicates that INEC was less transparent in the 2019 elections than in 2015 and 2011 elections.

According to the report, Ward-level Collation faced five main challenges. They include: missteps and misconduct of INEC staff, deliberate denial of access to observers and media, logistical shortfalls, intentional disruption by politicians, political thugs and party agents, intimidation of collation staff and other malfeasance by security agents.

It however, recommended that INEC should improve processes for conducting collation in line with international best practices and should be tried in the off-circle elections ahead of the next national ballot in 2023.

It also recommended that INEC should  transparently and proactively  publish via the INEC website and through civil society organizations official  results for all elections contests, showing a full and accurate breakdown of figures down to polling unit level.

The report  further urged INEC to discipline  or if necessary investigate and  then prosecute its personnel alleged to have been involved in misconduct during  the collation process.

It also urged security agencies to notify the public-via the press and online-which units will be undertaking election security duties in each local| government area of each state to ensure that individual units can be held accountable for their conduct on election day.

The report  equally charged political party leaders to commit to holding their party agents and other members accountable for their election day actions particularly those present at collation centres. They should also discourage the use of political thugs and formalise penalties for party members involved in mobilising and financing them.

IT went further to suggest that further amendment of the electoral Act (2010) will allow for the introduction of electronic vote transmission which will reduce error in the calculation process and improve the pace of collation.

The international communities and development partner on their part  are expected to provide International election observers with the support and protection needed to observe after hours of collation at the ward and local government level.

The report also charged international entities to impose travel and financial sanctions against individuals involved in disrupting ward level collation and other kind of election malfeasance as well as  their political sponsors.