NEO Africana Centre takes swipe at EIU’s prediction on PEPC decision
…Says EIU’s prediction on PEPC decision tendentious, ludicrous
The NEO Africana Centre (NAC), a public policy think tank, has taken a swipe at the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) claim that the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) will not overturn Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February 25 presidential election.
According to the Centre, which sees the submission of EIU as tendentious and ridiculous, such a slanted interpretation of the PEPC proceedings is sloppy and artificial since it is not grounded in reason or common sense.
The public policy think tank which said it had thoroughly read the EIU study regretted not being able to locate any evidence that the organisation had provided to substantiate its prediction.
It claimed that what it actually observed was a time-consuming process designed to reach a predetermined conclusion.
In a statement by its Director of Public Affairs, Jenkins Udu, the Centre said the EIU prediction fell far below expectation and should therefore be consigned to the ash heaps of irrelevance. It wondered why the EIU did not take into consideration the roguery that went into the election as well as the wide condemnation of its outcome by both local and foreign observers before embarking on its embarrassing revisionism.
The statement reads in part, “We have just come across a tendentious and ludicrous report said to have emanated from the confines of The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The report predicted that the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) will not upturn the victory awarded to Bola Tinubu by the Independent National Electoral Commission in the February 25 presidential election. We painstakingly went through the report with the hope that aspects of it will tell us in concrete terms why EIU reached that conclusion.
“Regrettably, we found none. What was dished out in copious doses were issues that are not, in any way, remotely connected with the petitions before the PEPC. We were thoroughly disappointed because we had thought that a reputable organization such as the EIU would live up to its name. But it did not. If anything, the report on which the prediction was anchored read like a piece of balderdash with a predetermined objective. There were no facts or figures to support the prediction. There was even no clear-cut assertion that lends credence to the fallacious conclusion.
“In the absence of any reason or evidence to support its prediction, the report sheepishly went off the mark to talk about irrelevances like market reforms. The report, as procured as it must have been, could not sustain its defence of the wobbly Tinubu administration. What do you say of a report which says that the inflation which Tinubu met at 22.6 per cent in May will rise sharply over 2023 and into 2024?
“We find this tendentious reading of the proceedings at the PEPC not only laughable but ludicrous. We are disappointed that the EIU brushed aside the wide condemnations of the election by both local and foreign observers, a situation which has tainted the credibility of the election as well as its outcome. We are convinced that the EIU is on a sinister mission to lie to the world about Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election. But the inglorious mission has failed abysmally. That is why what the EIU called a report reads like a poorly crafted opinion lacking in substance and informed viewpoint.
