Chuks Okocha in Abuja
The Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation (NIDO) has criticised foreign Heads of States for hurriedly congratulating Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president-elect, instead of first enquiring from their embassies in Nigeria on the conduct of the presidential and National Assembly election.
This is coming as a coalition of civil society groups known as Speak Out Africa Initiative (SOAI) have called on INEC to use the opportunity of the shift of the governorship and states’ assembly polls to resolve all technical glitches associated with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC I-rev at the March 18 new date.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja, the Executive Chairman of NIDO, Kingsman Chikwelu, said it was not fair for foreign heads of states to congratulate Tinubu as president-elect without seeking to hear first-hand on the conduct of the election from their embassies in Nigeria.
He said, “they threw precautions to air and rushed to congratulate Tinubu as president-elect in an election that was fundamentally flawed like the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections.
“It was an election where the guidelines and code of conduct did not follow the rules of conduct by INEC before the two elections, the BVAS and I-rev were not adhered to.
“The media, the civil society groups and other foreign observer groups faulted the elections, yet the foreign heads of States were busy sending congratulatory messages. Is that how to grow and develop Africa?
“Those of us from France have sent our opinions and views to the French President, Emmanuel Macron for hurriedly issuing a congratulatory message to the president-elect. This should not be encouraged. It is against the development of democracy,” the NIDO executive chairman stated.
The NIDO chief wondered why the BVAS that was advertised as a game changer, but ended up in changing the will of the people.
Also, the Executive Director of SOAI, Kenneth Eze, called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to use the opportunity of the shift of the governorship and state houses of assembly to March 18, to resolve the technical glitches with BVAS and the I-rev.
Eze added: “The judiciary should not disappoint Nigerians. Don’t rely on technicalities being the last hope of the common man,” while he called for calm to let the judiciary do its work.
According to SOAI, “in this vein, we have launched a survey for citizens to appraise INEC conduct, adherence to its own guidelines/electoral act, perceived trust pre-presidential/national assembly election and now after results declaration, and most importantly, likely behavior in the coming gubernatorial/state assembly cum future elections. This will inform our survey.
“Just yesterday, the appeal court tribunal ruling on the INEC varying request to reconfigure the BVAS in preparation for gubernatorial/state assembly election has made them to reschedule the originally slated 11th March gubernatorial/state assembly election to now March 18; an extension by one week.
“Surprisingly, most citizens welcomed the judgement in good faith and had no issues with the postponement as it is viewed to be in favor of democracy for giving aggrieved presidential candidates fair ground to access election evidence from INEC.”
