The 2023 general election in Nigeria has been labeled as the “worst in the country’s history” by the Church and Society Department of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) and Caritas Nigeria, despite efforts to improve the electoral act and support from various partners.
The church’s report emphasizes the need for consequences for those who compromised the electoral system, leading to a manipulated outcome.
According to the report based on monitoring teams dispatched across the country, the election witnessed violence, intimidation, disenfranchisement, and vote-buying, which severely affected its credibility. The Catholic Church’s stance on the election is based on the findings of its CSN and Caritas Nigeria team.
The report was officially presented to the public on July 28 in Abuja by Very Rev. Fr. Uchechukwu Obodoechina, the Director of the Church and Society Department of CSN and the executive secretary of Caritas Nigeria. He expressed disappointment in the performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agencies, despite significant financial and logistical support.
One of the major flaws highlighted in the report was INEC’s failure to upload real-time results from Form EC8A to the IReV portal as promised before the election, raising concerns about the credibility of the electoral process.
As a result of the election’s contentious nature, numerous legal challenges have been filed, with 10 political parties initiating 1,341 cases, representing about 90 percent of the 1,490 contested seats. This has made the 2023 elections the most litigated and disputed in Nigeria’s electoral democracy history, with an estimated cost of over N3bn for INEC’s defense against the cases. The report suggests that more petitions may arise in the future, adding to the complexity of the situation.