President Bola Tinubu’s media aide, Tope Ajayi, has pointed to technical and logistical problems during the American midterm election while comparing reactions to electoral challenges in the United States and Nigeria.
Ajayi, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, made this known in a post on X on Wednesday.
He observed that despite reported problems during the US election, political commentators and party supporters had not dismissed the entire process as some Nigerians often do when elections are held in the country.
“I have watched pundits and political operatives and partisan talking heads on various US television networks. Despite some of the technical glitches and logistical problems with the mid-term election they have not discredited the process like many of our people do here,” he wrote.
Ajayi listed several problems, including ballot scanner programming issues in parts of New York, faulty equipment in Broward County, Florida, and a shortage of ballot papers at a polling station in Kansas.
He said the equipment failure in Broward County delayed voting, while the Kansas polling station reportedly received just 100 paper ballots instead of 100,000.
“There was also the case of 250,000 ballots that will be counted manually as a result technical problem with the voting machine,” Ajayi added.
His remarks come amid continued criticism of Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election, which opposition parties and observers faulted over technical and logistical problems.
