The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) has described the conduct of the 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections as ‘blatantly violent, manipulated and subverted’, as compared to previous elections.
Development Diaries reports that RULAAC noted in a press statement that the late arrival of election personnel and materials was a conspiracy to sabotage the election.
It called for the reorganisation of the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) to ‘ensure that their actions or inactions do not undermine the integrity of the elections’.
Generally, logistics challenges, overvoting, voter inducement, delay in uploading results from polling units to IReV, violence amongst others were challenges identified during the February 25 polls.
‘There was voter suppression in places like Lagos, Rivers State, Imo State, Bayelsa etc, through intimidation, threats and violent attacks on voters and electoral officials, in many cases, leading to disruption of the voting process’, the statement read.
The organisation also reported that many electoral officials were caught in brazen and shameless acts of election rigging.
It noted that many daredevil and brazen acts of violence and violation of the Electoral Act 2022 were captured in video, including situations in many polling units where some presiding officers refused to upload results despite demands by voters.
Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has brushed aside demands by some political parties to pause the ongoing collation and declaration of the results of the February 25 elections.
Five political parties, including the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), are protesting the failure of the commission to ask its officials to upload the results to the INEC portal from the polling units.
Others are Action Alliance (AA), African Democratic Congress (ADC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Like RULAAC, Development Diaries calls on INEC to respect the law by ensuring strict adherence to the provisions of the 2022 Electoral Act.
