Presidential Election 2023: Five things INEC promised Nigerians and failed

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is the electoral body that is responsible for the conduct of elections in Nigeria. This body was formed around 1998/1999 by General Abdulsalami Abubakar. The entire federation looks up to this body for the proper conduct of Nigerian elections. 

For the 2023 election INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu introduced some new and interesting features that would be used for the election. This was introduced because of previous ugly experiences that has been encountered by the body and also by voters. It was breath of fresh air for many of us when some of the features were carefully explained and for the first time everyone believed in INEC. 

Every voter was to experience this welcome development at the 2023 presidential election which was held on the 25th of February 2023.This particular election witnessed a large turnout of voters from different part of the country but it was highly disappointing as INEC failed to keep their promises. 

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Here are some promises made by INEC that they didn’t fulfill. 

1. They promised a free and fair election but unfortunately many polling unit experienced violent attacks before voting even started. Few days before the election, we saw some security officials in the media and strongly believed that they were ready to protect lives and properties. Many voters were chased out of their polling unit and the issue was either related to tribe or the party they wanted to vote. 

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2. THE failed BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System), this was the newly introduced technology that was meant to ease the electoral process but sadly it was the opposite. There were too many complains about the machine not been effective, it was either there was no password or network was bad for upload and all. 

3. Voting was still done manually; this was highly disappointing and embarrassing. INEC promised us that the voting process won’t be done manually, we were told everything would be online from accreditation to thumbprinting. But we ended up using ballot boxes which was now easy to snatch by political thugs.

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4. All results were to be transmitted live and uploaded on the IRev portal at the INEC website but that didn’t happen, results were uploaded very late and even after the winner of the presidential election was announced. 

5. Poor logistics; this was encountered in many polling unit across the country. Some INEC officials arrived late, some battled with poor network during accreditation or no data to upload results. 

11th of March 2023 is the Governorship election and we hope that wrongs by the electoral body would corrected on that day.

Click on the video to watch moments from the presidential election. 

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