Former Minister of State for Labour and Employment in the immediate past adminstration of President Muhammadu Buhari, Festus Keyamo, SAN, on Monday said the final report on Nigeria’s 2023 elections compiled by the European Union, EU, were mere reports of irregularities noticed during the elections and suggested recommendations for better polls in the future.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria in a post on Twitter, warned that it is not a determinant of the election’s outcome as postulated by Nigerians.
In his words, “Declaring certain aspects of an election or electoral process as ‘flawed’ is not synonymous as saying the whole process was a cataclysmic failure. This is the simple difference a whole bunch of people have failed to realise.
“There is no single election in the entire world that would not record certain complains of irregularities in certain areas. the real issued to determine is whether those supposed irregularities substantially affected the election to the extent that the loser(s) could have won or the winner could have lost. If you cancel an entire process each time some irregularities happen or are reported, we may conduct an election 100 times and no winner would be announced.
“It is only a forensic examination of the entire process by the judiciary that can clearly determine the extent the supposed ‘irregularities’ affected the final outcome of the elections. And there are legal rules already laid down to achieve this. The EU report is NOT (and cannot be) a document that tells you who won or lost an election. It only reports the ‘irregularities’ noticed and makes recommendations for improvement in future elections.
“Therefore, all the hoopla over that EU report is neither here nor there when it comes to legitimising or delegitimising the government of the day. That power or responsibility belongs to the judiciary.
“I hope those who are now gyrating excitedly as if they are ‘speaking in tongues’ over the EU report will also have the spirit and ‘anointing’ to accept and embrace the actual forensic judgment by our properly constituted law courts when they eventually decide on the 2023 elections.”
