‘It is deceitful to Nigerians’ – Peter Obi tackles INEC over 2023 election report

Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of deceiving Nigerians with the poll report released on Friday.

The 526-page report of the 2023 elections, formally released ahead of the first anniversary of the election, INEC explained why the IREV failed to upload the presidential results despite the seamless working of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS).

According to INEC , the server returned an “HTTP error” because of a configuration bug discovered after the polling units’ presiding officers could only upload the results of the national assembly elections.

However, in an interview with Daily Trust, Peter Obi, who spoke through the Chief Spokesperson of the Obi-Datti Campaign Committee, Yunusa Tanko, described the report as medicine after death.

According to him, the report of INEC stating that IReV refused to function is false, citing that there were three elections that day, and only the presidential result refused to upload.

He lamented that, unfortunately, everyone knew when INEC gave a written document stating they would not agree with any result not posted on the IREV.

He added that the report was a deceit to Nigerians, and it was important to revisit the electoral act and law to give clarity regarding the election process.

He said, “I think the INEC report is medicine after death. The truth about it is that if I didn’t mean that INEC actually deal with this issue as it happened during the election, possibly Nigerians will have believed and trusted this particular report.

“But here we are, the report of the INEC which signifies that the IREV refused to function or been uploaded during the election is false. Considering the fact that there were three elections that happened on that day, the Federal House of Representatives, the Senate, and the result was uploaded and there was no issue.

“Why must there be issue as regard to the presidential election? So totally for us is deceit, disdain for the people and is trying to promote an indecency.

“It is documented and everybody saw it. But then this is the same INEC who went again to the Supreme Court citing that they had an authority to collate the result manually and it was stamped on authority on illegality by our judiciary.

“And you want to convince me that that particular issue of glitch was not done deliberately? The truth is that nobody was arrested. Somebody ought to have been arrested who has been saddled with that responsibility.

“And if he is saddled with the responsibility, he must be held responsible and account for why the glitches occur.

“And even if there was a glitch, it’s just like your network taking off. It shouldn’t take up to a whole day. A few seconds it is off, three seconds it is back. Why was the server not back or why is the glitch not resolved?

“So for me and many of us, this is totally unacceptable. The report is deceitful to the Nigerian people. Our electoral act and electoral law must be revisited to give clarity as regard to the process of our election.

“We don’t want to give any lacuna to any of our election process and give room for the judiciary only to decide who wins election. Election should be done and dusted at the polling units.”