The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on Tuesday warned Yiaga Africa against undermining the efforts of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by questioning the results of the Edo State gubernatorial election.
News About Nigeria reports that the warning was made by the party’s national publicity secretary, Felix Morka, in a statement released on Tuesday.
In the statement, Morka noted that Yiaga Africa was overstepping their mandate as election observers.
The party also accused the civil society organisation of making baseless allegations regarding the manipulation of results, stating that these claims lacked supporting evidence and were based on speculative data.
The APC further warned that it is only INEC that has the right to give out an election result.
The statement partly reads, “Yiaga Africa is overreaching its election observer mission by second-guessing INEC on the result of last Saturday’s Edo State gubernatorial election. INEC is the sole statutory authority for the conduct and declaration of election results. Yiaga Africa is not and must desist from constituting itself as 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. Election observer missions are not election management agencies and cannot usurp INEC’s statutory authority as the sole election management body in Nigeria. Declaring or second-guessing the Edo State gubernatorial result based on unsubstantiated, unverified, and highly questionable statistical parameters created by Yiaga Africa is designed to create unnecessary confusion.”
