By Jude Opara, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Tuesday cautioned an election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa to desist from second-guessing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the outcome of the just conducted governorship election in Edo state.
The candidate pf the APC, Sen. Monday Okpebholo was declared winner of the election by INEC, a development which Yiaga Africa has continuously faulted.
In a statement on Tuesday, National Publicity Secretary (NPS) of the APC, Barr. Felix Morka said Yiaga Africa is simply acting as an organization that is out to use the said election to jostle for headline attention by overreaching itself by making statements that suggest that the election may have been manipulated.
The APC further argued that INEC under the law is the only authorized organization saddled with the responsibility of conducting and announcing the results of elections.
“NEC is the sole statutory authority for the conduct and declaration of result of the election. Yiaga Africa is not, and must desist from constituting itself into, a parallel agency for the declaration of election result.
“Alleging that results were manipulated without hard facts and figures but based on some statistical guess work is a clear disservice to the electoral process. Yiaga Africa’s report is a travesty, replete with methodological flaws, politicized observations, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and called its credibility into question.
“Election observer missions are not election management agencies and cannot usurp INEC’s statutory authority as the sole election management body in Nigeria. Doing so would constitute a clear breach of the Electoral Act and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”.
The statement also notes that while Civil Society Organizations and observer groups are at liberty to observe elections and also make their findings public, they do not have the mandate to announce election results.
“While election observer missions, like Yiaga Africa, are at liberty to share their observations about the election process with INEC and the general public, however, declaring election result or second guessing result declared by INEC in performance of its statutory duties, falls beyond their observation mandate.
“Declaring or second-guessing the Edo state gubernatorial result based on unsubstantiated, unverified, highly questionable statistical parameters created by Yiaga Africa for Yiaga Africa is designed to create unnecessary confusion and the appearance of a parallel election process”.
Morka added that the outcome of the election is a clear rejection of the Governor Godwin Obaseki administration’s bad governance and endorsement of President Bola Tinubu’s policies, which he insisted have transformed Nigeria’s economic landscape, strengthened security, and promoted good governance.
The APC Insisted that by their votes, the people of Edo State were loud and clear in their choice of Senator Okpebholo as the next governor and encouraged those who think otherwise to approach the court instead of overheating the polity unnecessarily.
