By Joseph Okoro, News/Comments, September 11, 2023
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) has expressed concern over the judgement of the presidential election petition Court (PEPT), last week Wednesday that dismissed the People’s Democratic Party and Labour Party presidential candidate petitions’, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr. Peter Obi, challenging President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s victory in the February 25, presidential election, conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
This is coming barely few days after the ruling of the Court, even as the Bishops took a swipe at PEPC for setting a bad precedent that INEC is not mandated to transmit election results electronically after billions of Naira were spent on Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS) and Result Viewing Portal (ReV). Stating however, that despite the confidence given by the commission to deliver credible general elections in 2023, the elections fell short of the people’s legitimate expectations as well as moral and legal standards.
The President of CBCN, Archbishop Lucius Ugorji who stated this, therefore prayed for a day to come when all election results will be finally decided at the polling units and not at the Court.
Archbishop Ugorji spoke at the Opening Ceremony of the 2023 Second Plenary Assembly of the CBCN, where he also described the electoral process as being eroded by the many pitfalls and irregularities evident before, during and after the elections, which Nigerians were disappointed that umpire, INEC failed to upload the presidential results in real time as promised. Part of the address reads:
“By the time the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, declared the presidential results, the results from thousands of polling units had not been uploaded on the IRev and a high percentage of the uploaded results, required for the verification and authentication of the manual results, were defaced or blurred.
“In some instances, irrelevant objects were uploaded on the IRev. Contestants in the presidential election, who protested against the electoral process and the results hurriedly declared by the INEC Chairman, were advised to go to court, and they did.
“After hearing their petitions, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) delivered its ruling in a marathon judgement on 6 September 2023. The five Justices of the Election Petition Court unanimously dismissed the petitions.
“According to them, they lacked merit. Despite the billions of Naira of tax-payers money appropriated for the provision of the BIVAS technology as a game-changer in our general elections, the Judges in their ruling tried, among other things, to suggest that it was wrong to expect INEC to keep its promise or obey the electoral regulation of transmitting election results electronically in real-time from the polling units.
“While respecting the views of the Judges, two of the petitioners rejected their verdict as lacking in justice and so have decided to head to the Supreme Court to seek justice. As this case moves to the next level, the fate of the country continues to hang in the balance and the future of democracy in our land stands on the edge of a precipice.
“We pray and hope that the Supreme Court Judges will neither bend the law nor seek to satisfy the whims and caprices of any party. We also pray and hope for a day in our nation when all election results will be finally decided at the polling units and not at the Court”, he said.
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