The All Progressives Congress (APC) has faulted the report of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) on the just concluded 2019 general elections.

The EU EOM, in its report, which contains 30 recommendations, and recently submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), stated that there were severe operational and transparency shortcomings, challenges of electoral security problems and low turnout of voters.

But, in a swift reaction, the spokesperson of the Buhari Campaign Organization, Festus Keyamo, SAN said that the report was not definitively conclusive.

Keyamo, in an interview with newsmen, faulted the report, stressing that the observation team were being dodgy in the entirety of the report, adding that a few polling units where some incidents took place cannot be used to represent the whole 120,000 polling units in the country.”

He said, “The result reflects the overall wishes of Nigerians, that was the report by so many observers, if you are an observer you should come to a definitive conclusion, don’t be dodgy about it, don’t run away from that fact because we have 120,000 polling units across the country and in all their report I don’t think they discussed at most 500 polling units.”

“If you observed certain anomalies, it could not have been more than 500 or 1000 polling units and if you do observe anomalies in those polling units, how does that substantially affect results coming from 120,000 polling unit?

“So it is not enough for you discuss the anomalies, they must discuss the overall results coming from the entire country and whether it did reflect the wishes of the people”.

He however cited countries like the United States of America and European countries who have issues in their elections claiming that Nigeria was not the only country where there are challenge of elections.

He urged the Election Observation Mission to give a detailed analysis to come to a definitive conclusion about the overall result of the election.

The EU EOM, however, appreciated the competitive attitude of political parties who were actively involved during campaign.

The report also frowned at the ruling party who failed to control their supporters who were inciting violence and intimidations on the opposition parties.

The report went ahead to fault the unruly manner displayed by security operatives who allegedly engaged in obstructing and harassing journalists and independent observers from carrying out their duties.

The EU report also noted that the election was marred by violence and voter intimidation, which has become a major characteristic of elections in the country.

Recommendations made by the EU team includes 1) Strengthening INEC procedures for the collation of results to improve integrity and confidence in electoral outcomes 2) establishing requirements in law for full results transparency with data easily accessible to the public and 3) considerably strengthening INEC’s organizational and operational capacity, as well as its internal communication.

Other recommendations included the inter-agency body responsible for electoral security to work more transparently and inclusively, with regular consultations with political parties and civil society.

On gender participation, it recommended that an introduction of legal requirement for political parties to have a minimum representation of women among candidates.

On election cases, the observers recommends that electoral tribunals should also cover pre-election cases in order to improve access to remedy and to avoid petitions being taken  to different courts at the same time. To reform the licensing system for the broadcast media to provide for media pluralism and diversity in all of Nigeria’s states.