The Nigerian presidency has expressed its “strongest” opposition to an assessment of the 2023 general elections by the European Union Electoral Observer Mission (EU-EOM), calling it a “jaundiced report” based on unfounded bias and claims.
In a statement on Sunday, the government labeled the EU-EOM final report 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.”
Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn into office late in May, after winning the presidential elections in February.
At a press conference last week in Abuja, the EU-EOM’s chief observer, Barry Andrews, said the West African country’s February presidential elections were marred by problems that undermined public trust in the electoral process. He proposed reforms that would increase transparency and accountability.
Speaking to RT, the spokesperson of the Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission (INEC), Festus Okoye, insisted that the polls had been conducted in a credible manner and that the results reflected the “genuine preferences” of the voters.
He questioned the credibility of the EU team’s report, citing the body’s inability to deploy more than 40 observers to the 36 states.
“There’s no way 40 observers can carry 176,000 in 36 states of the federation,” he said, adding that the report is not “based on actual facts on the ground.”
Locals in Abuja also disagreed with the findings, claiming that the voting process was carried out in a “free and fair” manner.
“This election was the most credible one in the history of our country. The EU are saying the election was not transparent because it didn’t go the way they wished,” a resident told RT.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, where Tinubu’s victory is being challenged by two of his main opponents, admitted in evidence on Monday the final report of the EU-EOM on the conduct of the poll.