The National Unity Forum (NUF), a civil society organisation (CSO), has said despite the challenges, the 2023 general election showed tremendous improvement over previously held polls in the country.
The group, during a rally in Abuja on Sunday, also called on Nigerians to pray for
President Bola Tinubu, the 36 state governors and all others in positions of authority in the country.
Godwin Meliga, national coordinator of NUF, who spoke to newsmen during the rally, said while some Nigerians may resort to acts of civil disobedience and open protests to express their disenchantment with the prevailing socio-economic and political challenges facing Nigeria, his group resorted to praying because it was the best option for the country at the moment.
“There’s nowhere in the world where elections will be 100 percent perfect. Nigeria is a growing democracy,” he said.
“We are coming from the professor Maurice Iwu era. There’s no election that will hold and people will not protest against, especially those who lost.
“But whatever happens today, we believe that the current INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmud Yakubu has brought a lot of innovations into the Commission.”
Meliga said as a group, the NUF will continue to collaborate with the electoral umpire and the national assembly to strengthen the electoral laws and the country’s democratic processes.
Meliga while passing a vote of confidence on Mahmood Yakubu led INEC, commended the chairman and his team for their strident efforts at ensuring the success and credibility of the 2023 elections.
He opined that given the tensed state of the national polity prior to the last general election, due mainly to socio-ethnic and geopolitical diversities, any attempt by INEC to have delivered a compromised electoral process could have triggered violent upheavals across the country, which may have threatened the very fabrics of our mutual coexistence.
“But the fact that INEC, under Prof. Yakubu, was obviously above board in the discharge of its mandate during the last general elections, helped to a great extent in disarming all those nursing sinister intentions for the country, including all those who may wish to capitalize on the outbreak of widespread electoral violence to achieve their narrow destabilization agenda for Nigeria,” Meliga said.
The rally which took off from Unity Fountain to the INEC headquarters.
