Laolu Akande, media aide to the former Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, has said that the failure of INEC to electronically transmit the results of the last presidential and National Assembly elections has broken the trust of Nigerians in the electoral body.
While speaking on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Friday, Akande stated that despite assurances from the commission to transmit results electronically, it failed to upload election results on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV).
He said,
“It is important to establish something we cannot basically run away from. INEC came out of this election as a damaged good. There is no doubt about that. INEC itself set up a standard. INEC determined the guidelines. INEC committed to the people of Nigeria that this is how we are going to declare the result of the election.
“In fact, the Chairman of INEC went abroad and said, ‘What we are going to do is that this results, when we get it, we would put it on our IReV in real-time.
“Now guess what? When it was time for INEC to fulfill its own guidelines – for certain reasons, we could talk about that- INEC failed to do what it said it would do. Now it is right that if you look at the law, and I think the judges also have affirmed that INEC has not really broken the law. But INEC has broken the trust of the Nigerian people.”
“It’s a problem for political legitimacy for people that came out of that system,” adding that INEC set itself up but couldn’t deliver its promise. There is a lot of distrust. INEC is responsible for that.”
