Ekiti State governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has faulted the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, on reasons for the renewed electoral violence in the
country, saying; “Violence returned to our electoral process because
of INEC partisanship and manipulation of the electoral process in
favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).”
He said “rather than lamenting, the INEC chairman should return the
electoral commission to what he met by detaching it from the APC,
which INEC has obviously merged with,” adding that; “if INEC is
neutral as it used to be before APC took power, there won’t be
electoral violence.”
In a statement on Wednesday, by his Special Assistant on Public
Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said;
“There were elections in Nigeria between 2011 and 2015, and those
elections were credible, such that Nigerians were sure that popular
candidates and parties would emerge victorious because votes were
allowed to count. Then, violence was no longer part of our electoral
process. But sadly, this present INEC has destroyed all those gains
and returned Nigeria to the era of ballot box snatching.”
He said it was shameful that after casting their votes, votes counted
and announced publicly, Nigerians now need to police their votes to
collation centres to prevent figures already entered into relevant
INEC forms from being altered.
The governor, who counselled Professor Mahmood Yakubu to be mindful of
his name and purge the electoral commission under him of partisanship
and election manipulation, said; there was no way President Muhammadu
Buhari would have been elected if INEC, under Prof Attahiru Jega was
the way it is now.
He questioned the rationale behind the jettisoning of the system
introduced by Prof Jega, in which accreditation of voters is done at
the same time in all polling units from 8am to 1pm while voting will
commence after the number of accredited voters are known and counting
of votes is done at the same time.
“By returning to the old system of accreditation and voting at the
same time, and destroying the credibility of our electoral process,
such that unpopular candidates are now having edge over and above
those acceptable to the people, INEC by itself caused the electoral
violence witnessed in the last 12 months.
“Even judges that will sit on election matters are now pre-arranged
and picked even before the election, such that after using INEC and
security agencies to pervert the will of the people, tribunals are
used to authenticate the electoral fraud.
“The reality, therefore, is that only INEC can put an end to electoral
violence and the only way to do it is for the commission to be
neutral,” he said.
