The Independent National Election Commission has been urged by the South East Network for Democracy and Accountability to void and reschedule the recently held presidential and National Assembly elections.
In a statement made accessible to our correspondent on Sunday, the organisation said that many Nigerians were dissatisfied with the results and that her position was based on suspected irregularities revealed by her members who watched the election.
The SENDA convener, Mr. Acha Emmanuel, and the group's secretary, Pastor Nwokocha Innocent, issued a statement in which they expressed regret that the election's results fell short of the standards necessary to be recognized as a credible election anywhere in the world.
The group maintained that many people have unanswered questions about the findings that INEC has announced.
Recall that on Wednesday morning last week, Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress's presidential candidate, was proclaimed the election's victor.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party, and Peter Obi, the candidate for the Labour Party, have already filed a lawsuit to challenge the election's outcome.
However, SENDA expressed displeasure that INEC crushed the hopes of millions of Nigerian electorates by failing to meet a minimal bar of electoral legitimacy after making several commitments to conduct a free and fair election.
The group criticized INEC for not following the Electoral Act of 2022, as amended, requirement that election results be electronically sent from the polling places to the INEC Result Viewing Portal.
It further stated that due to the late arrival of personnel and material resources at polling places, INEC disenfranchised many eligible voters in the South East geopolitical zone.
"Nigerian democracy can no longer be characterized as fledgling," the group claimed. Hence, there is no justifiable explanation for the glaring errors that have occurred in our elections since 1999.
The much-anticipated election received a number of assurances and reassurances from INEC, particularly with regard to the deployment and operation of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal.
As usual, the commission would take a strong stance in such circumstances, as demonstrated by her press release issued on Friday, November 11, 2022 in response to the allegation on the plot to abandon the transmission of polling unit results to IReV portal. However, several allegations were leveled against INEC regarding her alleged intentions to undermine the outcome of the process.
"Based on deductions from INEC's comments and remarks and a comparison with the actual situation, it is reasonable to conclude that INEC has fallen short of the promises it made to Nigerians.
It also showed that INEC was primarily not in charge of its technological affairs, which prevented electronic transmission on election day or perhaps there were unexplained lapses that the commission is yet to explain to the Nigerian voting population who placed such a high level of trust in her ability to conduct true, credible, free, and fair elections.
By signing this statement, we concur with numerous national and international stakeholders that the recently held elections lacked transparency and fell short of the required threshold for electoral credibility.
"We join many other Nigerians and stakeholders in calling for the cancellation and postponement of the recently held presidential and National Assembly Elections because they lacked credibility and merit by all measures. Nigerians deserve a legitimate result because they spent so much in this election.
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