APC rejects Yiaga Africa’s report on Edo poll

APC rejects Yiaga Africa’s report on Edo poll

Abdullateef Fowewe

The All Progressives Congress has rejected Yiaga Africa’s report on the Edo gubernatorial election.

Yiaga Africa on Sunday, September 22, reported that the Edo gubernatorial election result failed integrity test.

Reacting to the report on Tuesday, APC in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka warned Yiaga Africa to desist from constituting itself into, a parallel agency for the declaration of election results.

The statement partly reads, “In its jostle for headline attention, Yiaga Africa, one of the many civil society organisations accredited by the Independent National Electoral Commission is overreaching its election observer mission to second-guess INEC on the result of last Saturday’s Edo state gubernatorial election. INEC is the sole statutory authority for the conduct and declaration of results of the election. Yiaga Africa is not, and must desist from constituting itself into, a parallel agency for the declaration of election results.

“Alleging that results were manipulated without hard facts and figures but based on some statistical guesswork is a clear disservice to the electoral process. Yiaga Africa’s report is a travesty, replete with methodological flaws, politicised observations, inconsistencies, and 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.”

However, APC in the statement acknowledged that election observers have the freedom to share their observations about the election process with INEC and the public, advising that every observer should not report based on speculation.

“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 results or second guessing results 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,” the statement added.