By Prince Kurupati*
The much-awaited European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) final report on the last Nigerian general elections was released on 27 June 2023. The report, which features 25 recommendations, stated that Nigerians demonstrated a great commitment to respect democratic values, but inherent systematic weaknesses in the country’s electoral laws prevented a truly transparent and inclusive electoral process.
The EUEOM team led by Barry Andrews, the Chief Observer, started its work on 11 January. The mission arrived in the country at the invitation of Nigeria’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Its task was to observe the presidential and National Assembly elections on 25 February as well as the governorship and state houses of assembly polls on 18 March. It ended up observing supplementary elections for some constituencies on 15 April. For the presidential and National Assembly elections, it jointly observed the elections with a delegation of the European Parliament.
The mission thus had ample time to observe the electoral environment during the campaign period, election days up to the inauguration date and the immediate aftermath. Speaking about the time it spent observing Nigeria’s electoral environment pre-election, during the election and post-elections, EUEOM’s Chief Observer Barry Andrews said, “We are particularly concerned about the need for reform in six areas which we have identified as priority recommendations, and we believe, if implemented, could contribute to improvements for the conduct of elections”.
Namely, the areas that Chief Observer Andrews pointed out include the need to eliminate ambiguities in the law, ensure that election results are publicised in real-time, the need to establish a publicly accountable selection process for the electoral body (INEC) members, putting in place stringent measures that guard against electoral offences for everyone, removing discriminatory practises against women in political circles as well as ensuring the safety and security of media practitioners covering the election.
Chief Observer Andrews, however, acknowledged Nigerians’ commitment to democracy.
After receiving the EUEOM election report, President Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) said that the report is “a product of a poorly done desk job that relied heavily on a few instances of skirmishes in less than 1000 polling units out of over 176,000 where Nigerians voted on election day”. He rubbished the comments passed in the report, which castigated the inherent systematic flaws in Nigeria’s electoral laws and processes. In a statement relayed by the Presidential spokesperson Dele Alake, President Tinubu said, “We strongly reject, in its entirety, any notion and idea from any organisation, group and individual remotely suggesting that the 2023 election was fraudulent”.
The statement went further, alleging that the 2023 Nigerian presidential election was the best since 1999. “Our earlier position that the technology-aided 2023 general elections were the most transparent and best-organised elections since the return of civil rule in Nigeria has been validated by all non-partisan foreign and local observers such as the African Union, ECOWAS, Commonwealth Observer Mission and the Nigerian Bar Association,” Mr Alake said.
Mr Alake went on to state that the EUEOM report was written well before the election was conducted, as the main objective of the report was to discredit the polls, especially the presidential election. Mr Alake said, “While we did not mention the name of the organisation in the said statement (earlier statement released by the Tinubu campaign team before the polls), we made it abundantly clear to Nigerians how this foreign institution had been unrelenting in its assault on the credibility of the electoral process, the sovereignty of our country and our ability as a people to organise ourselves… We find it preposterous and unconscionable that in this day and age, any foreign organisation of whatever hue can continue to insist on its own yardstick and assessment as the only way to determine the credibility and transparency of our elections”.
Furthermore, Mr Alake said, “Now that the organisation has submitted what it claimed to be its final report on the elections, we can now categorically let Nigerians and the entire world know that we were not unaware of the machinations of the European Union to sustain its, largely, unfounded bias and claims on the election outcomes… we have many reasons to believe the jaundiced report, based on the views of fewer than 50 observers, was to merely sustain the same premature denunciatory stance contained in EU’s preliminary report released in March”.
The EUEOM report was also criticised by the electoral body INEC. The body’s spokesperson Festus Okoye in a televised interview, said that “It is not fair to judge the entire performance of the commission on the basis of a glitch in the result upload for the presidential election”.
The flaws highlighted by the EUEOM report may give credence to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party (LP) leader Peter Obi’s electoral disputes, which are before the courts of law, which accuse President Tinubu of ascending to power via rigging.
*Culled From July Issue Of PAV Magazine
