INEC is a monumental disgrace — Ex-minister, Chidoka

Osita Chidoka, a leader in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has criticised the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the way the 2023 presidential election was handled.

Chidoka spoke on Sunday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today.

Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared the winner of the February election, but the PDP and Peter Obi’s Labour Party (LP) had challenged that declaration, asking the court to annul his victory on the grounds that INEC had not transmitted the results in real time to the election portal, among other things.

However, it was decided by the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) that INEC was free to transmit results in any manner it saw right.

Read Also: PDP may soon become extinct as a party, former Aviation Minister, Chidoka, predicts

Though the court had struck out the petition and affirmed Tinubu’s win, Chidoka blamed the electoral body for reneging on its pre-election assurance that it would transmit the election results in real time.

“INEC is a monumental disgrace. INEC is an organisation I am ashamed to be associated with as a Nigerian,” he said while in response to the INEC’s inability to electronically transmit election results in real-time.

He said this is because of “the promises INEC made with the Anambra, Ekiti, and Osun [governorship] elections”.

“I came on this programme and called for third-party verification of the INEC system so that we are sure that on election day what is going to happen that day would not lead to a glitch. On election day, INEC said there was a glitch,” the former Aviation minister said.

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