The Human Rights Writers
Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called for the sack of the Chairman of the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Professor Yakubu Mahmood.
HURIWA in a statement on Sunday
by its Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and Media Affairs Director Miss
Zainab Yusuf, made the call in reaction to the European Union report on
Nigeria’s 2019 election.
The group stated that the
election was so rigged to an extent that over 40 percent of the results
returned by the compromised Yakubu Mahmood have been voided and rendered a
legal nullity by competent courts of law and election petition and appeals’
tribunals all across the country
“What is Yakubu Mahmood still
doing as Chairman when the shoddy and shabby electoral heist he supervised has
been discredited locally and globally?” it quipped
HURIWA said it was shocking that
Mahmood who presided over the most brazenly manipulated and criminally rigged
election in the political history of Africa has refused to voluntarily bow out
and resign from office for his spectacular and historical failure to conduct a
free, fair, transparent and peaceful election even when he had over 4 years to
prepare for the just ended polls.
HURIWA also noted that the
conduct of the Mahmood led INEC before the presidential elections petition
Tribunal in which INEC denied deploying the technological transmission of
results (electronic servers) which the electoral commission budgeted and got
the facilities installed has shown that Mr Yakubu Mahmood has no business
remaining as chairman of an agency that ought to be independent and operate as
an unbiased umpire.
It added: “How come that an
umpire who claims to be unbiased be the party in an electoral petition that
actively undermines and is frustrating one of the parties in the matter from
accessing basic evidence to help the Tribunal reach an objective and just
determination? This shows that INEC was an affiliate of All Progressives
Congress during and after the widely disputed polls. An independent commission
ought to be focused on helping the election tribunal to reach an objective and
truthfully honest determination rather than be the megaphone of one of the
contending parties in the petition before a competent court of law.
“A self-respecting academic
professor would on his own volition quit from office in any sane government and
civilized nation the moment it becomes notorious that he has failed to
discharge the public functions and duty for which the Nigerian State invested
multibillion dollars of public fund to enable a constitutionally independent
body like the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to perform.
“But this discredited Chairman
has continued to pontificate and parade about as the Chairman of an agency that
was sold and bought. It’s a shame that the Chairman of INEC under whose watch
over 150 potential voters and electoral officers were slaughtered by political
thugs affiliated to the central government has refused to show dignity and
conscientiousness by quitting his job to allow for a fresh head to steer the
ship of affairs in INEC.
“This INEC that has shamelessly
failed to pay the allowances and wages of youth corpers who worked as ad-hoc
electoral officers is the same that is pretending to be interested in any
transparent reforms of the decadent electoral system. This is comedy taken to
an unimaginably farcical but offensive dimension.
“We agree totally with the
conclusions of the election observations made by the EU election monitoring
team that watched the 2019 polls to such an extent that the reports highlighted
the state sponsored violence that marred the polls and the lack of openness and
transparency by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“We also accept the EU’s
observations about the misbehavior of some rogue armed security operatives and
their officers who were deployed by politicians to kill, maim and destroy many
lives and electoral materials in the areas that the leading opposition Peoples
Democratic party (PDP) was coasting home to victory in both the National
Assembly, governorship and Presidential polls.
“The violence in Lagos, Rivers,
Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom were so well coordinated to such a level that only the
Federal Government with such overwhelming federal might and control over the
security forces can so abuse their powers to destroy the credibility, integrity
and independence of the just ended National Election and most specifically in
the Presidential election.
“HURIWA agrees with the
conclusions of the final reports of the European Union Election Observation
Mission (EOM) to Nigeria for the March 2019 general election where it said a
combination of factors, including incumbency, suspension of the former Chief
Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen, a few weeks to the election,
and violence shaped the poll’s outcome but the EU did not go far enough and did
not call a spade by its name may be in a bid to appear to be politically
correctt as most diplomatic missions would.
“The EU report said Onnoghen’s
suspension did not follow due process. And it alleged that over 150 people died
in the violence that characterized the elections. We had consistently
maintained that the last elections became increasingly marred by violence and
intimidation, with the role of the security agencies becoming more contentious
as the process progressed.
“These tendencies were so
noticeable that at a point in some parts of Nigeria like in Lagos the armed
thugs paid by All Progressives Congress (APC) stopped voters of South East
origin from accessing polling booths even as the security forces were
teleguided and directed from Abuja to do nothing to stop these hired armed
party thugs from stopping Igbo voters from exercising their right to vote
because of widespread apprehension within the Presidency then that the Igbo
block votes in Lagos will undermine the plots of the ruling party to coast to
victory seamlessly but the APC adopted raw violence and bloodshed.
“The national leader of APC was
seen with two bullion vans reportedly conveying raw cash on the eve of the
Presidential polls which were suspected to have been deployed to influence the
conduct and outcome of the Presidential poll but EFCC working for APC looked
the other way but refused to act even when the money laundering law specifies
the sealing or limits of cash that an individual have physically at a time”.
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