The presidency accused the European Union Election Observation Mission of relying on rumours in its final February 25 presidential election report.
This Monday, the EU’s 50 observers presented their final election assessment, calling it illegitimate and lacking transparency.
Dele Alake, Special Assistant to the President on Special Duties, Media, and Strategy, stated the administration feels the final election report was a badly done desk job.
The story relies on a few interruptions in fewer than 1000 voting units, despite over 176,000 polling units where Nigerians voted on election day.
The President called the assessment “jaundiced” based on less than 50 observers to support the EU’s premature “denunciatory position” from March.
“We vehemently reject, in its totality, any theory and idea from any organization, group, and anyone remotely implying that the 2023 election was fraudulent”.
Full statement:
In May, we issued a press release warning the country of a continental multi-lateral institution’s attempt to discredit the Independent National Electoral Commission’s 2023 general elections. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, won the election.
In the statement, we made it obvious to Nigerians how this foreign organization had relentlessly attacked the legitimacy of the democratic process, our sovereignty, and our capacity to organize ourselves. In this day and age, any foreign organization may insist on its yardstick and judgement as the sole means to establish the authenticity and transparency of our elections.
Now that the organization has filed its final report on the elections, we can definitively inform Nigerians and the world that we were aware of the European Union’s efforts to uphold its mostly unjustified prejudice and claims on the election results.
For emphasis, the 2023 general elections, specifically the presidential election won by President Bola Tinubu/All Progressives Congress, were credible, peaceful, free, fair, and the finest organized in Nigeria since 1999.
The European Union and other international and local organizations have not presented sufficient evidence to impeach the 2023 election results.
At his news conference, EU Election Observation Mission Leader Barry Andrews clarified the EU’s limited judgement and findings on our elections. As an INEC-accredited election monitoring organization, EU-EOM watched Nigeria’s pre- and post-election activities from January 11 to April 11, 2023. Andrews told Abuja media about the final findings. During this time, EU-EOM had 11 Abuja-based analysts and 40 election observers in 36 states and the FCT. How EU-EOM independently observed elections in over 176,000 voting locations throughout Nigeria with just one person per state.
We would like to know and even ask the EU how it reached the conclusions in the submitted final report with the very limited coverage of the elections by their observers, who undoubtedly relied more on rumours, hearsay, cocktails of prejudiced and uninformed social media commentaries and opposition talking heads.
The EU-final EOM’s report on our recent elections is a badly done desk job that relies mainly on a few skirmishes in fewer than 1000 polling units out of over 176,000 where Nigerians voted.
We have numerous grounds to suspect the jaundiced study, based on less than 50 observers, intended to just support the same premature denunciatory posture included in the EU’s preliminary report issued in March.
We entirely refute any claim that the 2023 election was illegitimate.
All non-partisan international and local observers, including the African Union, ECOWAS, Commonwealth Observer Mission, and Nigerian Bar Association, agreed that the technology-aided 2023 general elections were the most transparent and well-organized since civil rule returned to Nigeria.
The Nigerian Bar Association’s report had over 1000 national observers and was more comprehensive and accurate than EU-50 EOM’s observers.
According to NBA, 91.8 per cent of Nigerians found the national and state elections credible and satisfying. Every election that receives more than 90% of the vote and is deemed transparent by citizens should be celebrated worldwide.
It’s heartening that INEC’s National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Mr. Festus Okoye, rejected the EU report’s false narratives to defend the election’s integrity.
It is also encouraging that the electoral umpire, as an institution open to learning and continual development, has committed to take on additional ideas, innovation, and changes to strengthen our election process’s integrity and legitimacy.
Elections are over. President Tinubu is developing a country while those who oppose it use the courts. President Tinubu’s strong leadership and socio-economic changes in his first month in office have impressed Nigerians. The EU and other foreign interests should be impartial in evaluating Nigeria’s domestic issues and let Nigeria breathe.
