Nigeria’s 2023 Election was Marred by Violence, Voter Intimidation: Caritas

Fr. Obodoechina said INEC’s failure to make appropriate transport and logistic arrangements contributed to the late arrival of polling officers. 

He said one of INEC’s greatest failures was the “inability, unwillingness, and outright refusal” to upload the sheet that records results at polling stations…to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time. 

Fr. Obodoechina said security in most of the polling stations across Africa’s most populous nation “was grossly inadequate to maintain orderliness and guarantee the protection of people and electoral materials.”

Where security personnel were available, he said, “some looked the other way as hoodlums ransacked the polling units and vandalized sensitive election materials.”

“Security personnel in some cases aided the commission of infractions on the integrity of the electoral processes during the elections,” he said at the July 28 report launch.

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Fr. Obodoechina called on INEC to conduct “an in-depth analysis and review of the performances of its officials during the polls to hand out sanctions to those who deliberately brought the work of the Commission to ridicule during the elections.”

“The widespread incidents of failure of consequences should be tamed to avoid impunity,” he said. 

He added, “We are of the view that further efforts should be made by INEC as permitted under the law to push for complete electronic voting during elections. It would reduce to the barest minimum the obvious infractions being experienced during elections in Nigeria.”

Fr. Obodoechina said Nigeria’s security agencies “should also examine their personnel during the elections.”

“This should be done by looking at many video footages that were recorded during the elections,” he said and added, “The attitude of ‘protecting our own’ associated with the topmost echelon of the security architecture should be done away with.”

The Catholic Priest said all reported cases of election-related offenses should be investigated and the suspects charged in court.

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.