THE Resident Electoral Commissioner in Ondo State, Mr. Segun Agbaje, has adduced reasons there are inconclusive elections in the country.
Agbaje, who spoke with reporters in Akure, the Ondo State capital, mentioned three principal factors – violence/disruption of the electoral process, non-use of the Smart Card Readers (SCR) and over-voting – as being responsible for the problem.
The REC stressed that no Election Management Body (EMB) worth its standard, like the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), would arrange and conduct an election with the usual preparations, stress and huge financial resources and deliberately scuttle it.
Agbaje maintained that such outcome would do the commission no good and would erode the hard-earned credibility that it had striven to achieve.
He noted that the issue of inconclusive elections was not new, stressing that it was also recorded in the First Republic.
Agbaje noted that the issue had acquired a new context in the contemporary Nigerian political situation, especially to those he said did not know that INEC had improved on its rules and methods of conducting elections.
In Ondo State for example, the REC noted that the Ilaje Constituency 11 bye-election in 2010 was inconclusive.
Besides, he said Ese-Odo/Ilaje Federal Constituency election in 2014 and Ilaje State Constituencies 1 & 11 in 2015 were inconclusive.
Agbaje added that judicial intervention made elections of the two state constituencies in Ilaje Local Government to produce winners.
In the two constituencies elections, the REC said 72 polling units election results were cancelled and the Returning Officers (RO) were forced to declare the results of the elections.
He said in all, 35,181 registered voters were disenfranchised in the two constituencies.
He added that inconclusive elections showed that Nigerian democracy was enjoying depth and consolidation due to the deployment of technology.
Agbaje said the fortification of the rules governing the conduct of the election had enhanced transparency and credibility in the electoral process.
According to him, with the trend in the use of technology by INEC, the idea of politicians short-circuiting the electoral process to favour themselves as being done in the past was becoming unrealisable.