A senior Advocate of Nigeria, Emeka Etiaba, has said the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was too hasty to have declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu as president-elect.
Emeka faulted INEC’s decision, saying the commission would only have announced the winner after resolving pending complaints.
He disclosed this during a Channels Television interview on Monday.
He said, “The issue of the complaints of the manipulations of the results sheets, BVAS not being uploaded by party agencies were also swept under the carpet. The agents and parties made so much fuss about it; they were promised that it would be looked at; indeed, Section 651 of the Electoral Act gives the commission seven days to look into those issues before making a return, but they didn’t do it.
“There was no compulsion in announcing the president-elect; indeed, section 70 of the electoral act gives the Commission up to 14 days to make their returns; what is the haste about?”
“INEC has the power to review the results; they are still within time. But what they could not do before they declared the winner, I doubt if they would do it now”, he said.
On March 1, the INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, declared Tinubu the winner of the February 25 presidential election.