Mobolaji Michael
THE National Secretary of the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), High Chief Peter Ojonugwa Ameh has described the ongoing attempt by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to review the conduct of the 2023 election as “an obvious attempt by the Commission to hide behind one finger“.
High Chief Ameh, in a statement, opined that If the electoral umpire is truly concerned about credibility, then setting an open independent public inquiry on the glitches that it claimed undermined the integrity of the 2023 presidential election is the best way to go.
“The suspicion and lack of public confidence in the election is so overwhelming that INEC review will not elicit the kind of public trust needed to either justify what happened or uncover the fraudsters within the Commission that deliberately thwarted the process by which Nigerians could have established a credible election process.
“It is obvious and noticeable how Professor Mahmud Yakubu is running up and down in an attempt to try to repair the battered image of the Commission and by extension his reputation as well.
“There is total loss of public confidence in the Commission so therefore if the Commission goes ahead to conduct a self-examination through a non-transparent process of reviewing the elections. If the Commission continues with the purported self-review process then it will amount to nothing in the eyes of the general public,
“The Commission can not review itself without the elements of biased so if Yakubu Mahmoud is interested in reviewing the 2023 general election, the right thing to do is to set up an independent commission of inquiry to investigate and examine the unverifiable claims of the Commission that there was a glitch. Their terms of reference should include but not limited to the following;
* Make known to the public the nature of the glitch and what caused it.
* Names of those in charge at the time it occurred.
“We need to know that this was not a deliberate attempt by members of the commission to undermine the integrity of our election by subverting the right of the people to vote and elect their leaders through a free, fair and credible process”, High Chief Ameh stressed.
He further enthused that the suspicion and lack of public confidence in the election are so overwhelming that the INEC review will not elicit the kind of public trust needed to either justify what happened or uncover the fraudsters within the Commission that deliberately thwarted the process by which Nigerians could have established a credible election process.
Eighteen-Eleven Media