Head of the media team of the President Muhammadu Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation, Festus Keyamo, on Saturday faulted the reports of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) in Nigeria on the 2019 Presidential election “for not coming to a conclusion in its report”.
“The result reflects the overall wishes of Nigerians,” Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said while addressing newsmen after the report was submitted in Abuja. “That was the report by so many observers.”
The EU Observer Mission had in its report said the election was marked by severe operational shortcomings and violence, calling for reforms in subsequent elections to avoid reoccurrence.
But reacting to the report, Keyamo said, “If you are an observer, you should come to a definitive conclusion, don’t be dodgy about it, don’t run away from that fact because we have 120,000 polling units across the country and in all their report I don’t think they discussed at most 500 polling units.
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“If you observed certain anomalies, it could not have been more than 500 or 1,000 polling units and if you do observe anomalies in those polling units, how does that substantially affect results coming from 120,000 polling unit?
“So it is not enough for you discuss the anomalies, they must discuss the overall results coming from the entire country and whether it did reflect the wishes of the people. This is what we want to know because they have problems in the US elections, there are problems in the EU and even UK elections.”
Keyamo said there was need for “a detailed analysis to come to a definitive conclusion about the overall result of the election”.
BusinessDay gathered that the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) in Nigeria, while also commenting on the controversial Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) server, said it knew nothing of the server which was allegedly used to transmit results of the 2019 general elections.
“The EU had to rely on INEC’s explanation in result transmission,” Hannah Roberts, Deputy Head of Mission, EU, said while answering a question on the INEC server.
It would be recalled that the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had claimed that an INEC server was used to transmit results of the election.
Earlier, Maria Arena, EU Chief Observer, had presented a final report with recommendations for electoral reforms. She said the EU EOM had 91 observers on ground for the Presidential and National Assembly elections across Nigeria.
She added that 73 observers were deployed for the Governorship and State House of Assembly elections while only 20 observers were used for the supplementary elections.
Following its observation mission, she said the EU EOM had 30 recommendations on how to improve future electoral processes in Nigeria.
“The mission concluded that the systemic failings seen in the elections, and the relatively low levels of voter participation, show the need for fundamental electoral reform,” she said.
The EU report prioritised seven recommendations of the 30, one of which was that Nigeria should “strengthen INEC procedures for the collation of results to improve integrity and confidence in electoral outcomes”.
Another recommendation was that “electoral tribunals cover pre-election cases in order to improve access to remedy and to avoid petitions being taken to different courts at the same time”.
