The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called
for the sack of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) Professor Yakubu Mahmood.
HURIWA in a statement on Sunday by its Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel
Onwubiko and Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, made the call in
reaction to the European Union report on Nigeria’s 2019 election.
The group stated that the election was so rigged to an extent that
over 40 percent of the results returned by the compromised Yakubu
Mahmood have been voided and rendered a legal nullity by competent
courts of law and election petition and appeals’ tribunals all across
the country
“What is Yakubu Mahmood still doing as Chairman when the shoddy and
shabby electoral heist he supervised has been discredited locally and
globally?” it quipped
HURIWA said it was shocking that Mahmood who presided over the most
brazenly manipulated and criminally rigged election in the political
history of Africa has refused to voluntarily bow out and resign from
office for his spectacular and historical failure to conduct a free,
fair, transparent and peaceful election even when he had over 4 years to
prepare for the just ended polls.
HURIWA also noted that the conduct of the Mahmood led INEC before the
presidential elections petition Tribunal in which INEC denied deploying
the technological transmission of results (electronic servers) which
the electoral commission budgeted and got the facilities installed has
shown that Mr Yakubu Mahmood has no business remaining as chairman of an
agency that ought to be independent and operate as an unbiased umpire.
It added: “How come that an umpire who claims to be unbiased be the
party in an electoral petition that actively undermines and is
frustrating one of the parties in the matter from accessing basic
evidence to help the Tribunal reach an objective and just determination?
This shows that INEC was an affiliate of All Progressives Congress
during and after the widely disputed polls. An independent commission
ought to be focused on helping the election tribunal to reach an
objective and truthfully honest determination rather than be the
megaphone of one of the contending parties in the petition before a
competent court of law.
“A self-respecting academic professor would on his own volition quit
from office in any sane government and civilized nation the moment it
becomes notorious that he has failed to discharge the public functions
and duty for which the Nigerian State invested multibillion dollars of
public fund to enable a constitutionally independent body like the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to perform.
“But this discredited Chairman has continued to pontificate and
parade about as the Chairman of an agency that was sold and bought. It’s
a shame that the Chairman of INEC under whose watch over 150 potential
voters and electoral officers were slaughtered by political thugs
affiliated to the central government has refused to show dignity and
conscientiousness by quitting his job to allow for a fresh head to steer
the ship of affairs in INEC.
“This INEC that has shamelessly failed to pay the allowances and
wages of youth corpers who worked as ad-hoc electoral officers is the
same that is pretending to be interested in any transparent reforms of
the decadent electoral system. This is comedy taken to an unimaginably
farcical but offensive dimension.
“We agree totally with the conclusions of the election observations
made by the EU election monitoring team that watched the 2019 polls to
such an extent that the reports highlighted the state sponsored violence
that marred the polls and the lack of openness and transparency by the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“We also accept the EU’s observations about the misbehavior of some
rogue armed security operatives and their officers who were deployed by
politicians to kill, maim and destroy many lives and electoral materials
in the areas that the leading opposition Peoples Democratic party (PDP)
was coasting home to victory in both the National Assembly,
governorship and Presidential polls.
“The violence in Lagos, Rivers, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom were so well
coordinated to such a level that only the Federal Government with such
overwhelming federal might and control over the security forces can so
abuse their powers to destroy the credibility, integrity and
independence of the just ended National Election and most specifically
in the Presidential election.
“HURIWA agrees with the conclusions of the final reports of the
European Union Election Observation Mission (EOM) to Nigeria for the
March 2019 general election where it said a combination of factors,
including incumbency, suspension of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria
(CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen, a few weeks to the election, and
violence shaped the poll’s outcome but the EU did not go far enough and
did not call a spade by its name may be in a bid to appear to be
politically correctt as most diplomatic missions would.
“The EU report said Onnoghen’s suspension did not follow due process.
And it alleged that over 150 people died in the violence that
characterized the elections. We had consistently maintained that the
last elections became increasingly marred by violence and intimidation,
with the role of the security agencies becoming more contentious as the
process progressed.
“These tendencies were so noticeable that at a point in some parts of
Nigeria like in Lagos the armed thugs paid by All Progressives Congress
(APC) stopped voters of South East origin from accessing polling booths
even as the security forces were teleguided and directed from Abuja to
do nothing to stop these hired armed party thugs from stopping Igbo
voters from exercising their right to vote because of widespread
apprehension within the Presidency then that the Igbo block votes in
Lagos will undermine the plots of the ruling party to coast to victory
seamlessly but the APC adopted raw violence and bloodshed.
“The national leader of APC was seen with two bullion vans reportedly
conveying raw cash on the eve of the Presidential polls which were
suspected to have been deployed to influence the conduct and outcome of
the Presidential poll but EFCC working for APC looked the other way but
refused to act even when the money laundering law specifies the sealing
or limits of cash that an individual have physically at a time”.