Election observer group Yiaga Africa has called on Nigeria to move beyond conducting “relatively peaceful” elections to establishing processes that foster greater public trust and confidence in the electoral system.
Yiaga Africa’s Programme Director, Cynthia Mbamalu, said on Monday that while the recent by-elections were largely peaceful, isolated incidents of attempted disruptions were recorded in some constituencies.
“Overall, it was a relatively peaceful process except for some constituencies in some states where there were issues of thugs trying to disrupt the process at some polling units. We need to move beyond just having a relatively peaceful process to a process that can inspire trust in the system.
“One major challenge we are beginning to have and experience is the process of result management process,” she said.
She noted that while the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had included electronic collation in its guidelines, the challenge lay in its implementation.
“The truth is, the electoral commission had in its guidelines provided for result management that the process of electronic coalition is also still part of the election guidelines,” Mbamalu explained.
She explained that decisions on overvoting and ballot cancellations create confusion.
“A lot of work has gone into trying to strengthen the process, strengthen INEC’s independence, get voters to care enough to show up and to vote, but it’s almost like the more work you do to strengthen the process to advance democratic principle the greater our political class deploys to undermine the effort,” Mbamalu said.