The coalition of civil society organisations on gender equality, leadership and good governance has told INEC to conduct credible governorship and state assembly elections.

Elizabeth Oziri, the national president of the coalition and executive chair of the Women and Child Disaster Rescue Initiatives, said this in a statement issued on Thursday.

The coalition decried the spate of violence that characterised the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections in parts of the country.

It urged Nigerians to shun all forms of violence, including threats and intimidation of fellow citizens in the remaining elections. The coalition stated that reports from its election observers deployed in the 36 states of the federation and the FCT for the polls indicated that the elections lacked the credibility to pass for a free and fair exercise.

The group urged INEC to ensure a more credible exercise to redeem its image, allegedly battered by its poor handling of the polls.

According to the statement, the irregularities that marred the polls inflicted a major dent in Nigeria’s image.

“Although the exercise was devoid of any hitches and chaos in some wards and polling units, it was not so in a majority of others. Issues like operational irregularities, logistics challenges, intimidation, violence, suspected compromise and poor network needed to transmit collated results from the BVAS machines to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal affected the exercise,” the statement explained.

The CSOs, nevertheless, encouraged Nigerians, especially the youths, not to despair or take the law into their hands but embrace peace and turn out en masse for the remaining polls.

“Nigeria is the only country we have. We must defend our land as we still believe in the promises she holds,” it added.

(NAN)