Sunday, 17 November 2013
ANAMBRA STATE ELECTION SHOULD BE CANCAELLED AND RERUN
The
All Progressives Congress (APC) on Sunday gave reasons why the Anambra State
governorship election should be cancelled.
In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed, the party said its demand was “based on the massive
disenfranchisement of people across the state, caused by the blatant
incompetent and/or deliberate sabotage by the electoral commission itself”.
The party said the call for total cancellation supersedes its
early call for a rerun in four local government areas, “based on the report
received from agents as well as from local and foreign observers during the
poll”.
It
accused Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of inexplicably using
a voters’ register that is totally different from what it gave to political
parties ahead of the election, with the result that the new register did not
contain the names of most of the registered voters.
The party said: “Worse still, delivery of materials to the strongholds
of the APC candidate, Senator Chris Ngige, was either done very late or not at
all, a development that further robbed over 300,000 of his supporters in three
key local governments of Idemili North, Idemili South and Awka South of their
franchise.
‘’After consultations with our agents as well as with local and
foreign observers, we have discovered that what we earlier complained about was
a child’s play, compared to the widespread disenfranchisement that was
orchestrated by the same body given the responsibility of ensuring a free, fair
and creditable election on Saturday.
‘’We discovered that INEC has set up a multi-layer arrangement
to ensure that most voters in the state were disenfranchised, apparently acting
out a script to manipulate the result of the election in favour of a certain
candidate. Where voting materials were supplied, the commission provided wrong
voters’ register.”
‘’Coming after the charade in Delta, this is a serious
development that raises questions about the ability of INEC to conduct free,
fair and transparent elections anywhere in Nigeria. It is particularly serious
because if people who registered to vote are not able to do so, and even the
votes of those who managed to cast them do not count, then anarchy is
looming,’’ APC said.
It called for a probe of INEC to determine why it sabotaged its
own elections, even when people are determined to endure the orchestrated
inconveniences and shun all acts of violence, as was witnessed in Anambra on
Saturday when people waited patiently and peacefully, only to go home in total
disappointment.
‘’This is a new low for INEC, and unless something is done
urgently, the electoral commission may plunge Nigeria into a crisis from which
it may not recover,’’ the APC warned.
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