A pro-democracy group, Coalition of Civil Society Organisation and Political Parties for Good Governance (CCSOPPGG), yesterday urged the European Union (EU) to immediately withdraw its report on this year’s presidential election.
Members of the group made the demand when they stormed the EU Office in Abuja in a protest against the union’s report.
The activists insisted that the report was capable of setting the country on fire.
The protesters, who carried placards with various inscriptions, warned the EU not to start a war in Nigeria through its “biased” report on the election victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Addressing EU officials during the protest, the convener of the group, Lillian Ene Ogbole, accused the union’s leadership of a deliberate attempt to slight the Nigerians government.
The activist said every election in the world comes with peculiar problems, adding that Nigeria’s was not an expectation.
Faulting the EU report, Ogbole asked rhetorically,
“How on earth can less than 50 people from the European Union come to Nigeria to observe an election where you have over 176,000 polling units and then they go to less than 1,000 polling units of election centres and they draw conclusions?
“As you can see, we are here with thousands of patriotic Nigerians who have come specifically to raise concerns about the presentation and the report of the European Union concerning the elections.
“We have come to register, unequivocally, that we are not satisfied with the report of the European Union. As a matter of fact, we think that the report is not just ridiculous but a deliberate act to the Nigerian entity and, of course by implications, our leaders and the government of Nigeria. We are all Nigerians here. We were all here during the just-concluded elections.
“I would like to say to you very clearly that there is nowhere in the world that elections are devoid of crisis and hitches. Every election in the world, both in the United States of America, in Great Britain, Ireland and even the European Union countries, have issues.”
