‘We are convinced that what EU-EOM called final report on our recent elections is a product of a poorly done desk job that relied heavily on few instances of skirmishes in less than 1000 polling units out of over 176,000 where Nigerians voted on election day’
By Valentine Amanze
The Presidency has rejected the European Union’s (EU) official report that Nigeria’s 2023 general election result was fraudulent, describing the exercise as the best in Nigeria since 1999.
The Special Adviser to the President (Special Duties, Communications and Strategy), Mr. Dele Alake, who carpeted the EU report in a tweet, said that there was no substantial evidence provided by the union or any foreign and local organisation that was viable enough to impeach the integrity of the 2023 election outcomes.
He said that the limitation of the EU final assessment and conclusions on the 2023 elections were made very bare in the text of the press conference addressed by the Head of its Electoral Observation Mission, Barry Andrews.
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“While addressing journalists in Abuja on the so-called final report, Andrews noted that EU-EOM monitored the pre-election and post-election processes in Nigeria from January 11 to April 11, 2023 as an INEC accredited election monitoring group.
“Within this period, EU-EOM observed the elections through 11 Abuja-based analysts, and 40 election observers spread across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. With the level of personnel deployed, which was barely an average of one person per state, we wonder how EU-EOM independently monitored election in over 176,000 polling units across Nigeria,” Alake said.
Besides, Alake asked the EU how it reached the conclusions in the submitted final report with the very limited coverage of the elections by their observers.
“We are convinced that what EU-EOM called final report on our recent elections is a product of a poorly done desk job that relied heavily on few instances of skirmishes in less than 1000 polling units out of over 176,000 where Nigerians voted on election day.
“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.
“We strongly reject, in its entirety, any notion and idea from any organisation, group and individual remotely suggesting that the 2023 election was fraudulent,” he said.
He insisted that the technology-aided 2023 general elections were the most transparent and best organised elections since the return of civil rule in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the result of the exercise is being challenged by the acclaimed winner, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
valoa2000@yahoo.com
