Gbaja to EU mission: Get balanced views before making conclusions on Nigeria’s elections

Femi Gbajabiamila, speaker of the house of representatives, says the European Union (EU) commission should endeavour to get balanced views while monitoring the upcoming elections.

Gbajabiamila said this when the EU election observation delegation visited his office in Abuja on Friday.

He asked the delegation to speak with multiple stakeholders to get the true accounts of the elections outcome before making their conclusions.

He said as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, Nigerians are bound to have different biases and opinions that represent their interests.

“We are prepared for [elections], and those saddled with the responsibility, from Mr. President, the National Assembly, INEC, the political parties, and all the other stakeholders along the chain, we are all ready to make the votes count,” he said.

“The electoral law is in place. We have done all we needed to do, and now we have to wait and see how things pan out.

“Election is a process that leads to the final day. It’s very complex, but at the same time it can be very simple, depending on the attitude of the actors.

“We are hoping there will be no problems in the area of deployment of technology and also security issues, we hope not to worry about it much.”

The speaker expressed concern over the low collection of permanent voter cards (PVC) but said “it is our firm belief that the number of PVC collections will be ramped up way before the elections proper”.

Barry Andrews, the leader of the delegation, said the EU mission will diligently observe the polls, just as it had done on previous occasions.

He said the body has a reliable data-collection methodology to give a report on the outcome of the polls.

He said the mission will formally unveil its work plan on Monday in Abuja and would release a preliminary report on the elections two days after the conclusion of voting.