Politics
THE position of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) on the 2023 Presidential election is a significant and credible assessment of the electoral process that should not be ignored.
According to the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO), the lawyers union is an organisation that is known to be non-partisan and always on the side of history.
In a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, BMO said it is a credit to the Buhari administration that NBA’s findings indicated that only about 8 per cent of the voting public were not satisfied with the exercise, across the country.
“We find it heartwarming that the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) has, in its findings on the Feb. 25 presidential and National Assembly elections, shown that only 8.2 per cent of people that voted were dissatisfied with the electoral process.
“A cursory look at NBA’s interim report on the election revealed that about a quarter of the electorate were excellently impressed with the elections (27.1 per cent) while majority of the voters (64.6 per cent) were ‘somewhat satisfied’. Only 8.2 per cent rated the conduct poor or very poor.
“NBA, however, did not lose sight of technical issues around the election and called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to “ensure that all bugs or glitches in the BVAS machines and other election technology are fixed” before the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.
“This is a far cry from criticisms that trailed the election over INEC’s failure to upload Presidential election results to the INEC Result Viewing (IREV) portal.
“For us, we see the report as one that speak directly to the improvement that President Muhammadu Buhari pledged to bring to the electoral process, especially with the introduction of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and IREV.
“So in our estimation, the NBA finding from a survey of voters is a more direct vote of confidence from those who took part in the process as opposed to the position of opposition parties which used the failure to upload one set of results to the INEC portal as reason to discredit the entire election.
“We can’t stop reminding the parties that are complaining about their performance in the National Assembly election which the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) won with an overwhelming majority and which they seem not to have any issues with.
“We invite Nigerians to note that if an overwhelming majority of the voting population rates the election high then it means that the Buhari legacy of electoral reforms is on track”.
The group is convinced that President Buhari would go down in history as one Nigerian leader who institutionalised the country’s most effective electoral reforms.(NAN)
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Tags: BMO NBA
