non-governmental organisation and pro-democracy group, the Human Rights
Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has given the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) 48 hours to rescind its appointment
of Amina Zakari to head its electoral committee for the collation of
results.
HURIWA likened the appointment to “match-fixing”, saying
it shows clear signs that the forthcoming presidential poll has already
been “technically manipulated”, following the choice “of a biological
relation of President Muhammadu Buhari, Mrs. Amina Zakari, to head the
core committee to co-ordinate the collation of results of the general
election”.
HURIWA has also asked the National Assembly to declare
a state of electoral emergency and pass a vote-of-no-confidence in the
hierarchy of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
They
have also supported calls for dissolution of the election management
board and the appointment of a new team of “impartial and patriotic
Nigerians to head the electoral umpire and conduct free, fair,
transparent and unbiased general election”.
A statement by
Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and Zainab Yusuf, the group’s National
Coordinator and National Media Affairs Director, respectively, read: “We
have just ended a six hours long national emergency parley in Abuja of
our core national leaders and the leaderships of over 35
non-governmental organisations and our attention dovetailed into the
emerging but very extensively ethically damaging national emergency now
occasioned by the illegal and immoral appointment of Mrs Amina Zakari,
the blood relation of President Muhammadu Buhari, to head the
collation of results team for the most strategic national election in
Nigeria’s nascent democracy, in which her uncle, President Muhammadu
Buhari, is desperately interested in winning a second tenure and is
hotly contested by some distinguished Nigerians.
“This aberration
of this heavily compromised INEC is like making a sister of a
goalkeeper of one of the two competing football teams as the central
referee of the most competitive finalists’ match and you expect that
there will be fair play and justice. Doing such a morally damaging
action is like match-fixing. What has happened today in INEC, with the
ill-advised decision of Yakubu Mahmood to give the most sensitive
appointment to the biological sibling of a major contender in the same
electoral contest, amounts to the electoral equivalent of match fixing.
“This
current chairman of INEC is surely an agent of destabilisation and
electoral manipulation. We have, on many occasions asked for the removal
of the duo of the chairman of INEC and the niece of the president, Mrs
Zakari Amina, who is a national commissioner in INEC because we have
always maintained that she has played less than dignified roles as
INEC’s national commissioner in the last three years to such an extent
that almost all of the elections conducted in the last three years in
which she played pivotal supervisory roles have always ended up being
manipulated in favour of the political platform of her uncle and the All
Progressives Congress whose tendencies have whittled down the integrity
and credibility of the electoral process in the country.
“We
are giving the INEC chairman 48 hours to rescind this toxic decision or
the organised civil society community will meet and take a range of
actions to draw the attention of the global community to this
criminality and outright rigging that has already started to unfold.
“Nigerians
of good conscience must reject this criminality of INEC and we call on
the National Assembly to rescue the February presidential election from
the clutches of hawks in the presidency bent on rigging the election by
all means and foisting an unpopular winner on Nigerians, which may
snowball into long drawn civil strife with broad-based consequences for
the survival of constitutional democracy.
“Nigeria is about to be
destroyed through carefully choreographed electoral heist and the world
watches without acting to stave off the danger which could constitute
the greatest threat to Africa and the world.”
Source:- Saharareporters
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