***Recommends punishment for saboteurs
A non- governmental organisation, Hallowmace Foundation has blamed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for not living upto its promises to fully engage the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the Presidential and National Assembly elections held last week across Nigeria.
While commending Nigerians for trooping out en masse to participate in the polls as well as demonstrating the enthusiasm and maintaining peace, the Foundation said the outcomes of the elections in many respects fell far short of expectations of Nigerians and the international community.
This is coming against the background that the BVAS failed to transmit results to the INEC Portal as mandated by the electoral act 2022 which eroded the confidence of Nigerians in the entire process.
In a press statement signed by the Executive Director of the Foundation, Sunny Anderson Osiebe, which was made available to media houses, Monday, in Abuja, he said the process lacked credibility.
“It is public knowledge that, either through the ineptitude of INEC (Ad Hoc) staff, the willingness to undermine the electoral process or both, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the use of this machine against the promises made by INEC, the election management body was a grand deception of Nigerians.
“This act of deception was an enough reason to throw the whole country into chaos. To this end, the claims of INEC on the BVAS must be subjected to expert verification. We recommend that any sabotage in the use or misuse of the BVAS must be punished.
Thanks to the resilient maturity of Nigerians on the day of the elections, the issue of the BVAS was actually a trigger to the kind of chaos that was calmly avoided.
“It is still surprising to note that the availability of the so-called BVAS could not stop the wanton thumb-printing and senseless rigging that had characterised the Presidential and National Assembly elections.
He said the Foundation being an INEC-accredited observer in the elections deployed its staff during the elections to the entire 109 Senatorial and 360 House of Representatives collation centres across the country.
Explaining further he indicated that the foundation had, in conjunction with other partners, undertaken several field activities to voting venues and result-collation centres.
According to Osiebe:
“Following what Hallowmace Foundation and partners gathered from the field and the pieces of information that had come in from our 24-hour round-the-clock phone-in radio programme at Armed Forces Radio,Abuja, we have completed a comprehensive analysis of what took place across the country in the Presidential and National Assembly elections.
“As part of our observations, movement of electoral materials, both sensitive and insensitive ones, including the deployment of human elements, still remains a big challenge to INEC and the electoral process.
“INEC is advised to work on the above, especially, in the forthcoming Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections.