Channels Television Reporter, Kayla Megwa, says Nigeria’s Independent Electoral Commission’s (INEC) tardiness has significantly undermined the trust Nigerians had in the Commission ahead of the general election.

According to her, the failure of the INEC to timeously address the gaps of their electoral management system and procedures has incensed a lot of Nigerians who had hope this year’s elections would be largely free and fair.

Nigerians were at the polls on February 25 to elect a new President and Vice President and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives in an election which many have described as the tightest since 1999.

However, in the days following the election, the INEC has been accused of vote rigging and fraud following hitches during and after the polling event and in the collation of results.

Speaking on the issue, Kayla Megwa said, the INEC had ample opportunity to address the situation adequately but failed to do so.

“Whether there’s any admission of fraud we can’t say anything about that. What has happened is that this vacuum has been created. It’s not even a question of political preferences or what party you stand on or what you support, this system, this BVAS system was the game changer. This was the game changer; this was what got a lot of young people to believe in this process because this paper carrying was going to end.

“We were not going to be having situations where the Professor will sit down and start to call numbers and then you get tired. The idea that it was going to be done electronically in such a way that there’s actually no way you can rig this, we saw you transmit the results, we saw what was there, we took a picture of it, the fact that that critical element failed has in many ways destroyed the trust that many Nigerians had in this process. That is the truth,” she said.

According to her, after so much effort had been taken to get young Nigerians to engage in Nigerian politics and partake in electoral processes, the INEC’s gaffes will undo all progress made.

“And for a generation of voters, over 13 million  new voters, 70% of which were young Nigerians, we had spent so many years worrying about the fact that young Nigerians are only interested in watching Big Brother and gossiping and talking about personalities online, they decided to get into the process.

“This particular scenario whether INEC wants to admit it or not …to explain INEC’s point of view they did apologise, but like I said, that apology came after they were reminded. They didn’t speak from the front. If the problem was going to come from them and they see that there was a problem and they addressed that problem it would have made a lot of people angry as well but it would have made people feel like these people understand that we are watching them.

“ It almost feels in many ways, at least from the people that I’ve spoken to, of course party faithful, here at the INEC office, you can feel the anger in them. ‘Why did you lie to us?’ is the feeling that you’re getting from people, ‘why didn’t you tell us that this can happen?’ you promised that this was not going to happen and we believed you.’

“I actually spoke to a lady today who said that this has pulled us back a generation because before this generation of voters to believe in this process again, it will take so many more years. I mean it’s one of those situations where we wish INEC had done the right thing at the right time. All eyes are on INEC right now whether they want to admit or not, every observer mission has released a statement indicting INEC on this particular matter…” she said.