By Isaac Ukpoju
Lafia – The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it recorded over 1,689 court cases arising from the 2019 general election.Mallam Mohammed Haruna, INEC National Electoral Commissioner in charge of Niger, Kogi and Nasarawa states disclosed this on Thursday in Lafia during the state level post election review retreat.Haruna explained that more than 890 of the cases were pre-election matters arising from conduct of political party primary elections, while 799 were election petitions at the various tribunals across the country.
According to him, the pre election cases indicated that politcal parties needed to put their acts together in order to deepen the nation’s democratic process.He also said that the cases before the election petitions tribunals showed that much still needed to be done to improve on the electoral process.“We are here to review what we did for this year’s general election with a view to improving on our subsequent outing.“You will agree with me that any document is work in progress, you can never get it perfectly,” Haruna.
He expressed optimism that from the review of the 2019 general election with inputs from the various stakeholders, subsequent elections would be better than the previous as noticeable pitfalls would be addressed.Haruna cited the unprecedented number of political parties that participated in the 2019 general election as one of the challenges that the commission faced during the conduct of the polls. In his remarks, Dr Uthman Ajidagba, Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state said that 26 cases were recorded in the state from the 2019 general election.Ajidagba said two were pre-election litigations while 24 cases were at the election petitions tribunals.
He said that there were no much complain from the elections in the state given the minimal numbers of cases.“That we have this small number means that there was a level of satisfaction but some people just want to prove points by going to the tribunal,” he said.
He maintained that the post election review retreat was very crucial to enable the commission correct identified lapses and consolidate on the successes recorded.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the post election review retreat had in attendance, Electoral officers from the 13 local government areas of the state, returning officers as well as collation officers.
