The All Progressives Congress (APC) has
asked President Goodluck Jonathan to walk
his talk as far as the organization of free and
fair elections in the country is concerned,
saying all the assurances so far given by the
President have not translated into credible
elections.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Monday by
its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed, the party urged the President to
go beyond mere rhetoric and take concrete
actions to ensure that the elections in the
country are not marred by the intimidation
and harassment of opposition party members
and supporters as well as the deliberate
disenfranchisement of voters, which
hallmarked the Anambra and Ekiti
gubernatorial elections, among others.
”On the same day the President’s latest
assurances of a free, fair, credible and
transparent elections in 2015 were being
reported, agents of the Jonathan-led federal
government were ransacking the offices of a
company hired to carry out an opinion poll for
Osun State ahead of the 9 Aug. gubernatorial
election.
”If the opposition can no longer freely carry
out opinion polls, if the companies hired to
carry out such polls are harassed and
intimidated by SSS officials as they did to
tnsrms, the offices of which were searched for
six hours, after which top officials of the firm
were dragged to the SSS offices in Shangisha
and computers carted away, then how can any
President convince anyone that free and fair
elections can be held under his watch?
”If the Ngozi Okonjo Iweala-linked NOI polling
firm has never been harassed for its
choreographed opinion polls that favour the
Jonathan Administration, why should other
firms be subjected to the kind of Gestapo-
tactics that tnsrms was exposed to? This is
why we are asking President Jonathan to walk
to talk,” APC said.
The party said that already, the foundation
was being laid to rig next month’s
governorship election in Osun at source, as
INEC has been frustrating attempts by APC
members to obtain their Permanent Voters
Cards, even as the PDP has continued to
boast that it will again use the military to
illegally shut down the state and bully the
opposition in Osun, just like it did in Ekiti.
It also wondered whether INEC Chairman
Attahiru Jega properly weighed the statement
he made, in which he tried to justify the
deployment of troops to Ekiti for the state’s
gubernatorial election on the basis that they
helped to ensure a violence-free election
”Jega should be asked to explain why is it
that the troops who were sent to provide
security for the Ekiti election were harassing
and intimidating only the opposition? Why is
it that they were arresting only opposition
members? Is that also part of providing
security for an election? If soldiers had only
provided non-intrusive security for the
election, perhaps no one would have
complained. But where they turned themselves
into the enforcement arm of the ruling party,
everyone, including INEC, should be
concerned,” APC said.
The party called on President Jonathan to
refrain from deploying the military for election
purposes and read the riot act to his cabinet
members, like Musiliu Obanikoro and
Abduljelili Adesiyna, and party officials who
specialize in electoral malfeasance, and
elections will start becoming free, fair, credible
and transparent to such an extent that the
world will notice.
”Saying one thing and doing the opposite, Mr.
President, will not translate to credible
elections. The world is watching,” it said.
As a starting point, APC urged the President,
if indeed he is committed to free and fair
elections, to launch an inquiry into why the
offices of the firm carrying out an opinion poll
for Osun state were invaded, and to tell
Nigerians whether the firm would have been
harassed if it had been hired by the PDP or its
candidate for the Aug. 9th election.
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