Kukah to INEC: Nigerians expect a better performance in gubernatorial election

Matthew Kukah, Catholic bishop of Sokoto, says the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must improve its mistakes before the March 11 gubernatorial election. 

Kukah spoke during a programme on Arise TV on Friday.

On Wednesday, INEC announced Bola Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the presidential election conducted on February 25.

Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, said Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes.Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had the second-highest figure with 6,984,520 votes, while Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) was next with 6,101,533 votes.

But the election has come under criticism as political parties and stakeholders have asked for the cancellation of the result.

Abubakar and Obi have declared their intention to challenge the result in court.

International observers and civil society groups said the late arrival of voting materials to polling units and the glitches in the bimodal voter accreditation system (BIVAS) were some of the hiccups that characterised the election.

Speaking on the situation, Kukah called on the INEC to ensure that voting materials arrive at the polling units on time and clear “all obstacles” that might hinder the free and fair conduct of the governorship elections.

“If we have any lesson to learn at all, it is that those who have their PVCs buried will have to start digging the ground to find them. Because I believe on Saturday we are going to see people going out to either consolidate their gain or seek to claim what they thought they lost through carelessness. So we are going to see a much more robust process on Saturday,” the cleric said.

“We just hopefully pray that INEC would learn from the mistakes it may have committed last week and ensure that voting materials arrive in good time and all obstacles are cleared on the path of ordinary people so that this process can be seen as being free, fair and credible.”