FG rejects EU’s conclusion on 2023 general election

The Presidency has rejected the European Union’s conclusion on the Nigeria’s general election.

The President’s special Adviser on Special Duties, Communications and Strategy Dele Alake insists there is no substantial evidence provided by the European Union or any foreign and local organisation that is viable enough to impeach the integrity of the 2023 election outcomes.

The Presidency says it is worth restating that the limitation of EU final assessment and conclusions on Nigeria’s elections was made very bare in the text of the press conference addressed by the Head of its Electoral Observation Mission, Barry Andrews where he noted that EU-EOM monitored the pre-election and post-election processes in Nigeria from January 11 to April 11, 2023 as an INEC accredited election monitoring group.

Within this period, EU-EOM observed the elections through 11 Abuja-based analysts, and 40 election observers spread across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. With the level of personnel deployed, which was barely an average of one person per state, we wonder how EU-EOM independently monitored election in over 176,000 polling units across Nigeria.

The Presidency says it is convinced that what EU-EOM called final report on the recent elections is a product of a poorly done desk job that relied heavily on few instances of skirmishes in less than 1000 polling units out of over 176,000 where Nigerians voted on election day.

The Spokesman of the President says they have many reasons to believe the report, which he says is based on the views of fewer than 50 observers, was to merely sustain the same premature denunciatory stance contained in EU’s preliminary report released in March.

The Presidency has however strongly rejected the report in its entirety, and any notion or idea from any organisation, group and individual remotely suggesting that the 2023 election was fraudulent.

The government’s position is that the technology-aided 2023 general elections were the most transparent and best organised elections since the return of civil rule in Nigeria and has been validated by all non-partisan foreign and local observers such are the African Union, ECOWAS, Commonwealth Observer Mission and the Nigerian Bar Association.