Lawyer Urges inec To Build Public Confidence

A constitutional lawyer, Chukwuma Chinwo, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to perfect its act to enable Nigerians have trust in the electoral process.
This is as he said that the huge number of petitions filed by aggrieved candidates at the Tribunals after the 2019 general elections is an indication of lack of confidence in the electoral process.
Chinwo stated this in Port Harcourt while reacting to a recent statement by the
Deputy Chief Registrar, Election Petition Tribunal, Court of Appeal, Mrs Rabi Abdulazeez, who said the number of the petitions filed as of April 16 has risen to 766.
According to Chinwo, “Nigerians should learn how to concede when they lose elections and that way if you lose you do not begin to fault the system. The other one is that the electoral body should learn to do its work in such a way that everybody will see it and be satisfied that it was done well.
“So what can be done in such situation is let the electoral body perfect its act. Let Nigerians find cause to have confidence in the electoral body. Once we are in that situation there will be less complaints,” he said.
On his part, a senior lecturer, Faculty of Law, Rivers State University (RSU), Dr. Edwin Jonathan, blamed the development of politicians who do not accept defeat after the elections.
“I believe that the reason our elections will remain a do or die affair is because of the massive spending by government”, he said.
Jonathan said, “Most of these politicians who contested elections and who are insisting on winning either if they lose at the polls they want to win at the Tribunal is because leadership in Nigeria is not about service”.

Dennis Naku