Despite reported complaints, pockets of infraction, and disputations by political parties, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr Yakubu Maikyau (SAN) says INEC had “delivered and performed well” during the Presidential and National Assembly Elections.
Speaking on Channels TV, Maikyau noted that the elections went well with people coming out to express their franchise.
“I will say that the elections went well. Those who came out were happy to express their franchise.
“There were challenges, definitely. There were some infractions, some of them actually constituted electoral offences but on the whole, I will score INEC as having performed maybe about 78, 80 percent in the delivery of these elections.
“That will be an A for every exam. Notwithstanding, all the things that happened we are not ignoring,” Persecondnews quotes the NBA boss as saying.
Persecondnews recalls that after instituting a suit against INEC’s declaration of APC’s Bola Tinubu as President-elect, the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Friday granted separate applications of the PDP and Labour Party to inspect election materials used in last Saturday’s election.
The appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, granted the applications after separately hearing the two ex-parte applications.
It ordered the INEC to allow the applicants access to the election materials in full including and specifically the sensitive materials and all other materials thereto.
Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, and Labour Party’s Peter Obi had sought relief from the court to inspect the materials.
The two candidates had approached the court and filed ex-parte motions at the Presidential Election Court at the Court of Appeal, listing INEC, Tinubu and the APC as the first, second and third respondents.
They requested that they be allowed to inspect all the election materials in the custody of the INEC.
On March 1, INEC had presented a Certificate of Return to Tinubu and his running mate, Sen. Kashim Shettima for winning the election with about 8.6 million votes, beating Atiku and Obi to the second and third positions.
They had already rejected the polls as flawed and fraught with rigging and irregularities.
However, while insisting that the polls were fair, the NBA President also advised the electoral body to identify the lapses in the just concluded elections to avoid a recurring experience in the upcoming March 11 state elections.
Maikyau said: “That is why we are admonishing and advising INEC and recommending to INEC that in those areas where we saw lapses in the election held on the 25th February 2023, deliberate efforts must be taken to make sure that those lapses did not occur again in the elections that are coming up on the 11th March.
“Because when these lapses happened, it impacted on the confidence of the public in the process.”
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