By Emmanuel Oloniruha
Voters Awareness Initiative (VAI), an accredited observer group, has congratulated Nigerians for the peaceful and credible conduct of the Feb. 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.
Wale Ogunade, the group’s president, disclosed this in a statement by the Director, Media and Mobilization, Nelson Ekujumi, in Abuja on Thursday.
Ogunade described the outcome of the election as a reflection of the people’s will and victory for democracy.
“We deployed over 100 accredited election observers, monitored reports of other observer organizations as well as the media for situation reports.
”We observed the conduct of the elections in 176, 606 polling stations across the 36 states and the FCT.
“We can confidently report that the electoral process was duly complied with by the electoral umpire at the polling stations and at the different stages of the collation of results.
“It is in substantial compliance with provisions of the electoral Act, at variance with the campaign of lies, falsehood, misinformation, blackmail and calumny against the electoral umpire,” he said.
Ogunade commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for its professionalism, objectivity and dogged commitment to the provisions of the electoral Act in the conduct of the elections.
“We are indeed proud and commend INEC for the professional and unbiased discharge of it’s responsibility in line with the provisions of the constitution and global best practices.”
He congratulated the President-elect, Sen. Bola Tinubu on his “national spread electoral victory”.
Ogunade advised aggreived candidates and political parties in the Saturday elections to seek redress in court.
“The Electoral Act provides mechanism for the resolution of disputes.
“We admonished any of the contestants who may be aggrieved to seek redress in court rather than through claims of incitement in the social media which has no place in law.”
He commended electorate for coming out to vote on election day even in the face of economic and social challenges.
He also commended the local and International observer groups for their unbiased observations and report of the elections.
This, according to him, has helped to deepen Nigeria democracy, adding that their final reports would help the electoral umpire to improve on observed shortcomings going forward.(NAN)
