1999, 2003 election results missing - INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission on Thursday raised fears that the results and data of the 1999 and 2003 general elections were missing.

The commission, however, said researchers did not find it difficult to trace the 2019 general elections results which was already online.

According to him, the draft compendium recommended that the result of elections should be released in a more organized manner that will aid documentation.

INEC National Commissioner (Election and Party Monitoring) and former member of the Nigeria Institute of Social and Economic Research, Prof. Anthonia Okosi – Simbina, stated this during a one-day workshop to look at the proposed compendium of the results of 2007, 2011 and 2015 general elections, organized by NISER, Ibadan.

According to her, the programme focused on preparing a compendium of 2007, 2011 and 2015 general elections results because data of the result of the 1999 and the 2003 general elections results were not available.

She said there were no particular findings from the 2007, 2011 and 2015 general elections results.

Okosi – Simbina added that the difficulty they encountered in the research process before she was appointed National Commissioner was that the 2007, 2011 and 2015 general elections results were collected individually without proper organization.

She said, “You need to organise them from the polling units, constiuencies and local governments. We want people to get the statistics of the voters. The Women, the men, artisants and the rural dwellers.

“If political parties follow the demographics, they will be able to know their targets during political campaigns. It will also help the government in the provision of essential things. It will also help INEC too.

“It was difficult to get that of 1999 and 2003; much of the data were not made available because it was scattered in various offices but the 2019 data was not like that because we had a better way of storing them and it’s online.

“The recommendation is that the result of election should be release in more organized manner.”

She said the data they got was not organized in a better form for researchers to use.

Also speaking, a National Commissioner and chairman, Board of The Electoral Institute, Prince Solomon Soyebi, said they have interrogated the result of the elections.

He stated that INEC was trying its best to ensure that the results of all the elections from 1999 were available online and lesson learnt on those elections help in future polls.

“Result of the 2019 general election is in our website. It is separated based on sex, rural setting and other demographics. From the 2019 general election, we can now show the state with the highest votes. Lagos has always experience lowest percent of registration and voting”, Soyebi said.