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• He must go, Ohanaeze, others insist
More Nigerians from across the political divide and professions yesterday kicked against the skewed allocation of 30, 000 new polling units between Northern and Southern Nigeria by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
They argued that by allocating 21,615 polling units to the North and a paltry 8,412 voting centres to the South, INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, had set the stage for the rigging of the 2015 general elections.
Among those who kicked against the new INEC arrangement yesterday, were former presidential political adviser and former Anambra State Governor, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former Chairman of Interparty Advisory Council, IPAC, Chief Osita Okereke, National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Chief Victor Umeh, National Secretary, Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP, Chief Willy Ezeugwu and Dr. Tanko, National Chairman of the National Conscience Party, NCP.
Others are Ekiti State, former president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Dr. Dozie Ikedife and President of the Public Interest Lawyers League and a delegate to the just concluded National Conference, Mr. Abdul Mahmud.
Already, leaders of the Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly, SNPA, have rejected the new polling units created.
The leaders, led by First Republic Information Minister, Chief Edwin Clark and Rt. Rev. Bolanle Gbonigi, said that the additional 30,000 polling units in the country INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, announced, were not proportionately allocated between the North and South.
At a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, SNPA accused Prof. Jega of hidden agenda and demanded his resignation.
Also, Afenifere, the Pan-Yoruba group, which met in Akure, Ondo State, rejected the exercise and called for the removal of Prof. Jega. But the INEC boss has declared that he would not quit because his action was in the best interest of Nigeria.
But yesterday, Dr. Ezeife said: “The South as a whole has taken a position that Jega must go and we are not changing our mind on that. By the actions of Jega (the new polling units he released) 2015 election has been rigged in favour of some people against President Goodluck Jonathan. How can the North-West have over 8,000 new polling units and the entire South-East zone gets a mere 1,000 units, the same figure for Zamfara State and the FCT? That is impossible. You know the South-East is the strongest base for Jonathan and Jega has singled the zone out for punishment. Jega has taken sides on the matter and only fools will believe his excuses. His resignation remains the only way out of the matter. Jonathan must remove him immediately. This is my position and the position of all responsible people of the South. Jega did well in Anambra, Osun and Ekiti elections but those were strategies he used to hoodwink Nigerians. God has been supporting Jonathan and there is nothing a thousand Jegas can do to remove him from office.”
To Okereke, Prof. Jega has a hidden agenda. He said that the INEC chairman had already planned how to rig the 2015 elections going by the new polling units released by the commission.
He said: “There is no need for the new polling units. In the first place, there was no voter education on the units and the basis for the allocation of the units remains suspicious. The voter registration machines he brought to the South-East were the old and damaged ones which were not working and that was a big plot by Jega to deny the people of the region opportunity to register and vote in future elections. Jega has already planned how to deny Jonathan victory in 2015 should he decide to re-contest. We cannot accept the new polling units and the only safe thing for him to do is to resign else we will not participate in future elections conducted by Jega.”
Similarly, Chief Umeh (APGA Chairman) said that, “Prof. Jega has done his worst so far and nobody, I repeat nobody, is happy with him. He has shown his teeth as a northerner and has deliberately emasculated and disfranchised millions of Igbo and people of the Southern Nigeria as a whole. It is clear that the new units are not acceptable to millions of Nigerians and our position is that it must be revisited or we revert to the one being used until we get it right. For now, it is flawed.”
According to Ezeugwu of CNPP, “What I have to say is that the process for mapping out the new polling units and the distribution formula are fraudulent. Jega wants to truncate 2015 election. Thank God that it happened right now and we are witnesses. How can FCT have more polling units than the whole South-East Zone? God has caught him. He has to amend it or God will deal with him and his co-travellers. If he fails to amend it, then we will not participate in any election INEC will conduct under Jega’s leadership” because he wants to deny our people opportunity to vote in 2015 and deny Jonathan the opportunity to win.”
Dr. Tanko of the NCP said: “The authenticity of the new polling units released by INEC is questionable. The list is lopsided and does not reflect true federalism. There seems to be large opinion that the process was not scientific. Jega should have made efforts to ensure equity and fairness in the distribution of the new units in line with our federal structure. Giving a particular zone or region more units than the others is not fair and it gives room for rigging and unfair sharing of votes.”
On his part, Dr. Ikedife (Ohanaeze) said: “The exercise is skewed to favour a certain part of the country politically. There is no other explanation to what INEC under Jega has done.”
Governor Fayemi urged INEC to justify the creation of the new Units. He spoke in Ado-Ekiti yesterday when he collected his new e-passport.
The governor said INEC must be queried by Nigerians in order to find out whether the move was meant to give political advantage to any region.
He said: “INEC has a duty to demonstrate to Nigerians that this is not meant to give advantage to any region or any political party or to any individual. But, if it is to give advantage to any region, to any political parties or to any individual in the 2015 race, we must query INEC and Nigerians have raised the alarm about that to know precisely what it is all about,”
It is ‘Jegamandering’ – Lawyers League
President of the Public Interest Lawyers League and a delegate to the just concluded National Conference, Barr Abdul Mahmud, described the new polling units’ creation as “Jegamandering.”
Mahmud told Nigerian Pilot that the reasons adduced by INEC for the exercise were suspicious, given that elections are around the corner.
“While it is the statutory duty of INEC to have done what it did, it raises some fundamental questions and worries. In the first place, INEC does not have a credible voters’ register, if you consider the discrepancy between INEC’s registered voters and the number of voters who turn up eventually to vote.
“It beats the imagination of any fair minded observer how for instance; the whole of the South- East region has less than 2,000 polling units in the new Jega’s arrangement, which I call “Jegamandering”. This is a region with the highest population density, a region swarming with people like every other region in the country.
“Jega is absolute tosh. The exercise is nonsense. This Jegamandering serves one purpose; give advantage to the North based on a fictitious statistical census projection. It is all a lie. He arrived at his new pus with 175 million population projection for Nigeria. Jega’s population growth rate does not match those of the previous census decade. His Jegamandering must be resisted,” he said.
Source: Nigerian Pilot
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