… Urges Edo State Govt To Cancel Exercise
…Asks National Assembly To Scrap State Electoral Commissions
Fijabi Olanrewaju
THE Labour Party (LP) has described Edo State local government elections held last Saturday across the state as “another sad testimony,” in the country’s electioneering process, adding that it showed “how low a state government can descend in attempting to rubbish the gains of democracy”.
The National Chairman of the party, Julius Abure, who spoke through the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, called on the Edo State government to cancel the elections.
Abure said that the exercise “was a mockery of democracy and such must not be allowed to stand.”
Abure further cautioned that democracy could only succeed “when the authorities allow the votes of the people to count and the choice of the voters respected.”
The statement by Ifoh added that “reports from our agents across most of the polling units in the state confirmed that there were deliberate efforts by the Edo State Independent Electoral Commission (EDSIEC) to frustrate voters by ensuring that the electoral officers either came late to the polling units or didn’t show up at all.
“In a few places where the election held, insufficient ballot papers were brought with no single result sheet. But at the end of the day, results were churned out with the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) returning elected.
“Before the election, credible information reached us that the state government had no intention of conducting any election, let alone a credible one. The EDSIEC, we gathered, simply took instructions from the Government House and announced an already prepared list of winners of the election.
“While insisting that Edo people and Nigerians deserve the best to represent them in government, the party decried the inability of states independent electoral commissions across Nigeria to help democracy grow.”
The statement alleged that “they are purely appendages of the state’s government and there is nothing independent in them”. This is as it called on the National Assembly to scrap the commissions and entrust the conduct of the local government elections to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for proper management.
“The State’s Independent Electoral Commissions have become an embarrassment to democracy in Nigeria. It is, therefore, time to scrap them so as to restore sanity in our grassroots politics,” the party emphasized.
Eighteen-Eleven Media