She regretted that INEC dashed the hope of Nigerians who had expected it to conduct free, fair and credible polls in the country.
Bucknor-Akerele in an interview with The NEXT EDITION said that she was totally disappointed by the way the 2019 elections were conducted, saying that the process fell below standard.
She recalled that Nigeria had transparent presidential elections on June 12, 1993 and in 2015 but dismissed the 2019 presidential poll as a charade.
“I think the whole exercise was a disaster. It was not free or fair. It was not credible. There were open vote buying and the security agencies could not do anything about it; so I don’t know how anybody should categorize the elections as free and fair.”
“When they were enticing the voters with money openly to go and vote for them. Apart from that, there was intimidation of voters by the army, so how can such elections be free and credible,” she said.
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She denied the allegation that her party, the PDP was equally guilty of vote buying, saying, “I don’t know because all I know is what I saw because I was in the field and certainly we did not give any money to anyone certainly that’s a lie.”
She commended the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar for seeking the help of the tribunal to retrieve his mandate and expressed the hope that he would get justice from the court.
“My expectation from the court is that the judges should examine the evidence and if they find out that Atiku is the winner then they should declare him winner. President Muhammadu Buhari, said he knew Atiku would go to court because he thinks he is controlling all the courts.
“Look at what he had done to the Chief Justice of the Federation, Walter Onneghen. So he is in control of the courts and he thinks if Atiku goes to court, he will not be able to come out victorious. But by the grace of God, I believe our justices are still honorable people and that they will do the right thing.”
Bucknor-Akerele was the deputy governor to Bola Tinubu of Lagos State from 1999 to 2003.
