The former Minister of State, Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, has weighed in on the discussions which the report of the European Union Election Monitoring Group on the last general elections has been generating among Nigerians. Keyamo said that there is no single election in the world where there is no record of complaints in some areas.
The European Union team recently presented its final report on the 2023 elections to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). In the report, the European Union Election Monitoring team said that the 2023 elections exposed the systemic weaknesses and signalled a further need for operational reforms to enhance transparency, accountability and inclusiveness.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government had rubbished the report, and described it as jaundiced, and added that they cannot accept report from any organization suggesting that the 2023 election was rigged.
In the statement which he released his verified Twitter handle on Monday July 3rd, Keyamo said – “Declaring certain aspects of an election or electoral process as ‘flawed’ is not synonymous as saying the whole process was a cataclysmic failure. This is the simple difference a whole bunch of people have failed to realise.”
Speaking further, he said – “There is no single election in the entire world that would not record certain complaints of irregularities in certain areas. The real issue to determine is whether those supposed irregularities substantially affected the election to the extent that the loser(s) could have won or the winner could have lost. If you can cancel an entire process each time some irregularities happen or are reported, we may conduct an election 100 times and no winner would be announced.”
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