The U.S. has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to address technical hitches reportedly associated with the use of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) before the governorship and state assembly elections on March 11.<\/p>\n
Ned Price, Spokesperson for the State Department, in a statement, said Nigerians were clearly within their rights to have such concerns and should have high expectations for their electoral processes in the just-concluded Presidential poll.<\/p>\n
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quotes him as saying, \u201cWe join other international observers in urging INEC to improve in the areas that need the most attention ahead of the March 11 elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that many Nigerians and some of the parties have expressed frustration about the manner in which the process was conducted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have also expressed frustration about the shortcomings of technical elements that were used for the first time in a presidential election cycle,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Price, however, advised the aggrieved presidential candidates to use all legal means to correct the anomaly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are well-established mechanisms in place for the adjudication of electoral disputes, and we encourage any candidate or party seeking to challenge the outcome to pursue redress through those mechanisms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe call on all parties, candidates, and supporters to refrain from violence or inflammatory rhetoric at this critical time,\u2019\u2019 the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
In addition, Price commended the active participation of civil society and the media for advancing electoral norms and political discourse on issues of importance to citizens.<\/p>\n
He said the U.S. noted with concern reports that numerous members of the media were attacked during the course of the election.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe urge the government, security forces, political actors, and all citizens to respect the media\u2019s critical role by refraining from any damaging acts against them and ensuring accountability for such acts when they do occur.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also congratulate the Nigerian people, especially the large number of youths who are relatively new to the political process, for demonstrating their strong commitment to democracy.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
According to Price, the United States congratulates the people of Nigeria, President-elect Tinubu, and all political leaders following the declaration by INEC on the results of the February 25 presidential election.<\/p>\n
He said that the competitive election represented a new period for Nigerian politics and democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach of the top three candidates was the leading vote-getter in 12 states, a remarkable first in Nigeria\u2019s modern political era, reflecting the diversity of views that characterized the campaign and the wishes of Nigeria\u2019s voters.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, on Wednesday announced that Tinubu, a former Lagos State governor and the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the election with the majority of votes cast across Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The APC candidate polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat fellow contenders \u2013 Atiku Abubakar of the opposition People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP) who polled 6,984,520 votes, Labour Party\u2019s Peter Obi had 6,101,533 votes to come third and candidate of the New Nigeria People\u2019s Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso, who polled 1,496,687 votes to place a distant fourth.<\/p>\n
Of the 36 states and FCT, Tinubu, Obi and Atiku won 12 states each while Kwankwaso won only Kano State.<\/p>\n
The 12 states won by Tinubu are Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Benue, Rivers, Borno, Zamfara, Jigawa, Ondo, Kogi and Niger.<\/p>\n
Atiku of the PDP won Taraba, Osun, Akwa Ibom, Adamawa, Kaduna, Sokoto, Yobe, Bayelsa, Kebbi, Bauchi, Gombe and Katsina States.<\/p>\n
Obi won the following states of Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Anambra, Abia, Delta, Edo, FCT, Plateau, Nasarawa, Lagos and Cross River.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to address technical hitches reportedly associated with the use of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) before the governorship and state assembly elections on March 11. Ned Price, Spokesperson for the State Department, in a statement, said Nigerians were clearly within their rights to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":57113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4239,5619,577],"class_list":["post-62805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-bvas","tag-technical","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}