INEC must redeem its image in March 18 polls – IPAC, Yiaga Africa

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must redeem its image in the gubernatorial and state House of Assembly elections, the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) and Yiaga Africa have said.

The National Chairman of IPAC, Yabagi Sani and the Chairman Board of Yiaga Africa, Hussaini Abdu, made this submission on Sunday night while speaking on Channels Television’s political programme.

Abdu expressed disappointment over the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV)’s failure during the presidential and National Assembly elections.

He accused INEC of not “speaking to anything” about why the portal failed.

• 10.6 million Nigerians used cannabis last year – NAFDAC
• Death toll rises to 17 in Southern Kaduna attack

Abdu said INEC must design a strategic plan on what to do when something goes wrong, adding that the electoral umpire must do a self-auditing of the presidential election to know what went wrong.

On his part, the National Chairman of IPAC lamented that INEC was not telling Nigerians the truth about BVAS, arguing that there should be a backup in case of any failure.

He said INEC was like Titanic with a lot of promises but crashed on its first voyage.

Sani however said, “In the case of Titanic, they were able to tell you that she went into a rock that divided the ship into two, but INEC is yet to come out to tell Nigerians what went wrong.

“If INEC had come out and said the system was hacked, this is not the first system that is being hacked in the world. The most sophisticated systems have been hacked in America, in China…

“Perhaps, people may ask ‘why didn’t you make redundancy factor into your server, into your links so that when this one fails, another one seamlessly would take over and we will not suffer this kind of unnecessary disaster that we are in today?”

He, therefore, called on the INEC to redeem its image in the March 18 governorship and House of Assembly

“Nigeria is our country and we must do everything possible to make sure that Nigeria remains great because we are a great country in particular when it comes to the issue of democracy.

“We have to ensure that this [electoral] process continues to a logical conclusion.

“It is not that we are happy with what is happening, but the issue is that if we do not allow the process to be completed, we may not have democracy to talk about,” the IPAC National Chairman said.