INEC Timetable Will Create Room For Rigging –Oshiohmole

Posted by African Examiner Latest Headlines, News, Politics Thursday, February 6th, 2014

IGNATIUS OKPARA, in Asaba

Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo state, has picked holes in the 2015 General Elections time-table recently made public by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), declaring that it creates loopholes for election manipulation.

Edo state governor Adam Oshiomhole

Addressing newsmen in Asaba, the Delta State capital Wednesday, after a stakeholders’ meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the comrade Governor said “Nigerians cannot afford to continue to be a laughing stock even by West African standard”.

He stated that, there are assumptions that elections will be rigged and therefore people are worried, saying INEC has to recognize that what determines the outcome of a match is the conduct of the referee and not necessarily the competence of the players.

His word: “I don’t understand why INEC wants to climb the tree from the top; they do recognize they have some explanations to make. Common sense demands that you climb a tree from the bottom for good reason.

“In any case, we are in this particular phase of democracy for fifteen years since 1999. What makes the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the collection of the federating states”

“When you want to do Presidential Election first, and you are deviating from an old pattern, you have some explanations to make.

“But it is more so when under this particular leadership of INEC that they did National Assembly Election first last time, people did complain that they ought to begin with the House of Assembly.

“If you know you still have to do some test- running, you rather try some test-running with smaller units because the governorship election will not be taking place in the 36 States. The election into the Houses of Assembly can’t be as problematic as the Presidential election.

“INEC has to convince us that their policies have been formed by strategy they can speak to, that they need to speak to it by the commitment to deliver on free and fair election.

The opposition Governor, who urged the professor Atahiru Jega led INEC to have a retrospective view of the already released time table, stressed that conducting the elections from House of Assembly to Governorship and National Assembly NASS before Presidential Election would have been better for the 2015 polls and Nigeria.