Yiaga Africa, an Election Observer Group, has advocated for peaceful elections as opposed to “Relatively peaceful” elections.

The Programme Director, Cynthia Mbamalu, who spoke on Channels Television, lamented the insecurity prevalent in some constituencies, which can disrupt the voting exercise.

According to her, the main problem confronting the polls was the management of results, noting that the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) had done its job by making constitutions for electoral coalitions, yet its application remains a challenge

“Overall, it was a relatively peaceful process except for some constituencies in some states where there were issues of thugs trying to disrupt the process at some polling units.

“We need to move beyond just having a relatively peaceful process to a process that can inspire trust in the system,” Mbamalu said.

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“One major challenge we are beginning to have and experience is the process of result management process” 

“The truth is, the electoral commission had in its guidelines provided for result management that the process of electronic coalition is also still part of the election guidelines.”

“The bigger question when it comes to an election is no longer saying it was relatively peaceful because we expect elections to be peaceful normally.

“Parties should actually take responsibility for how they have undermined the process due to their desperation to win power at all costs,” she added.

“A lot of work has gone into trying to strengthen the process, strengthen INEC’s independence, get voters to care enough to show up and to vote but it’s almost like the more work you do to strengthen the process to advance democratic principle the greater threat our politicians, our political class deploy to undermine the effort and to take us backwards,” Mbamalu said.