A civil society national roundtable has passed a vote of confidence on the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (NEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu, after the stakeholders reviewed the 2023 general election.
The roundtable organised by the Civil Society Organizations Central Coordinating Council which is the highest organ of the civil society community in Nigeria had in attendance chairmen of political parties, some presidential, governorship, senatorial, House of Representatives and House of Assembly candidates from various political parties in Abuja.
The national roundtable also commended the introduction of technology in the accreditation and transmission of results and called on the National Assembly to amend the Electoral Act 2022 to enable the deployment of technology in the result collation and announcement processes.
The communique they issued frowned at what the members called stereotyped attack on Yakubu and rejected the calls for his sack which the CSOs said was an expression of ill-will and done in bad faith.
The participants questioned the reports of the European Union Election Observer Mission and that of the Civil Society Situation Room for being narrow and not representative of what actually happened at the nearly 180,000 polling units in the country, wondering how a few observers deployed by both groups could have turned in credible reports.
The roundtable called on the newly appointed security chiefs in the country to give the INEC leadership full support to ensure the November governorship elections in Imo, Kogi and Bayelsa states are free, fair and credible.
Reading the communique on behalf of the political parties and the candidates, the national chairman of Action Alliance , Ken Udeze, said the roundtable observed that the diversity of political parties in the National Assembly was clear evidence that the elections were free, fair and credible noting that minority parties formed a majority of members of the House of Representatives.
