EU observes improvement in election process despite challenges across states

The delegation of the European Union (EU) Election Observation Mission said there was an improvement in the March 9 gubernatorial and state assembly elections despite the overall low turnout and violence.

They also observed eight cases of both underage voting and vote buying.

The chief observer of the observation mission, Maria Arena said this during the preliminary observation statement while addressing members of the media at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja, yesterday.

Among other issues, the chief observer raised was the improvement of the accreditation exercise at polling units across the country.

She also cited incumbency factor playing a role in the outcome of the elections.

“The elections were overall competitive with overall freedom to campaign. However, there was misuse of incumbency, including state-owned media, which prevented a level playing field,” she said.

Arena commended the civil societies and their role in “enhancing the transparency and accountability of the elections.”

“We support the views of civil society organizations that have called for reform in order to bring greater integrity to the electoral process in Nigeria,” she added.

The deputy chief observer of the mission, Hannah Roberts also brought to light that of the 40 recommendations made to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by the mission after the 2015 elections, only 4 were implemented in the 2019 election, and also emphasized that the country begins making early reforms in order to improve the election process come 2023.

“Of course, this election process is ongoing, but from what we’ve seen so far, only four have been implemented. Two of these were priority ones to do with continuous voting, rather than the separation of accreditation of voters, and also the establishment of time deadlines for preelection petitions.”

“However, what we see from this is that there’s a number of areas for reform that were not addressed. For example, we recommended more transparency in the result process including polling unit results being made public after every election process,” she said.

A call was also made by the chief observer for parties to urge their supporters to remain calm and “respect the process.”