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 election results which were already online.
INEC National Commissioner on Election and Party Monitoring, Prof. Anthonia Okosi-Simbina, stated this at a one-day workshop to look at the proposed compendium of the results of 2007, 2011 and 2015 general elections, organised by the Nigerian Institute Of Social And Economic Research in Ibadan, Oyo State.
According to her, the programme focused on preparing a compendium of 2007, 2011 and 2015 general elections results because data of the results of the 1999 and the 2003 general elections were not available.
She said, “We want people to get the statistics of the voters; the women, the men, artisans 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 results of elections should be released in a more organized manner.”
Also speaking was a National Commissioner and Chairman, Board of The Electoral Institute, Prince Solomon Soyebi, who said they have interrogated the results 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, adding that lessons learnt in those elections would help in future polls.
“Results of the 2019 general election is on 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,” Soyebi said.
