Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark and chief promoter of Olokun Festival and National Coordinator of Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), Chief Gani Adams, have reiterated their call on the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, to resign, if he still has any modicum of integrity left in him based on what they described as his shoddy preparations for the elections.
Clark who spoke with THISDAY at the weekend, said as a professor, former vice-chancellor and former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Jega ought to have long resigned as INEC boss based on the criticisms that had trailed his poor handling of the electoral process.
“If he still has honour and integrity, Jega should have long resigned his reposition as INEC chief. As a professor, former vice-chancellor and former President of ASUU, he should not let anybody tell him when to go. He has failed,” Clark said.
The Ijaw leader also accused the INEC boss of partiality, and of being an ethnic and religious jingoist, an unrepentant Hausa Fulani irredentist and a highly tribalised public administrator who is working to ensuring his kinsman wins the presidential election.
Even when Jega had not distributed Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) to states in the South like Lagos another, the cards had been distributed to states in the North. He even claimed that 80 per cent of the PVCs had been distributed in the North-east where people have been displaced owing to insurgency.
“Jega should resign his appointment as he chairman of INEC because he has lost the requisite moral rectitude to organise a credible election devoid of the shenanigans of the northern elders and their cohorts.
“I am not convinced that an INEC superintend by Jega would have any iota of impartiality to conduct a free and fair election in this country any more. Jega ‘s open romance, either directly or indirectly with elements of the opposition, has compromised his integrity, credibility and moral standing to conduct an impartial, free and fair 2015 presidential elections. “Because Jega was gravely intent on protecting the strategies to rig the elections in favour of the northern candidate, he circumvented fundamental and critical requirement of the law of the land.”
Also, Adams while addressing a press conference in Lagos yesterday on this year’s 21-day Eledumare festival being orgainsed by the organisation, posited that Jega’s removal had become urgent now having taken into consideration INEC’s incapacity to adequately prepare for March 28 election.
While accusing Jega of bias, the OPC coordinator posited: “It is embarrassing through Jega’s own publication that almost 90 per cent voters in areas of war and attrition in the North-east of Nigeria have been able to collect their PVC despite being discarded or displaced by war, whereas in the South-west, especially in Lagos State, where there is peace and tranquility, only about 45 per cent have been recorded of having been in possession of PVC.”
He stated that such a situation “is not only curious, but beyond the thinking imagination of a reasonable mind. I strongly believe this is unthinkable and fraught with evil intention.”
On the card reader, he stated that it was ill-timed; saying, “We have been having election in this country without card reader.” Secondly, we have not heard how card reader contributed or added value to any major election in the world.
He stated that “it is an attempt cleverly being injected by Jega to cause delay, confuse voters and prevent majority of voters in exercising their franchise, on election day.”
He added that the creation of 30,000 bogus and fraudulent polling units in the northern part of the country against the southern part was also a pointer to INEC bias.
“In his ingenious but highly fraudulent stride at rigging the election, Jega has gone through the back door at creating an additional 30,000 polling units not known to law and designated as voti g centres to deceive people having being heavily criticised by distinguished and eminent Nigerians. In a normal and sane clime, this singular action is a subversion of popular interest which should have earned Jega immediate removal and sack but it is surprising that he is still determined to conduct the election,” he added.
Similarly, a group, Network for Peace and Development in Nigeria, has lent its voice to the campaign to remove Jega, over an alleged romance with the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).
The group said yesterday in Abuja that its findings revealed that Jega ought to have begun compulsory pre-retirement leave in accordance with civil service rules.
The Director-General of the group, Mr. Preye Dressman, said as a body created by the constitution, INEC should be run according to the law and not on sentiments.
“We have duly carried out our research and found nowhere where it is written or insinuated that the Commission is a private organisation that should be run according to the dictates of an individual,” held Dressman.
He argued that there was nothing strange about asking Jega to proceed on a disengagement leave. He recalled that nobody complained when in 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan forced Jega’s predecessor Prof. Maurice Iwu to proceed on a disengagement leave.
This Day
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