The All Progressives Congress and Lagos based lawyer, Festus Keyamo, have risen in stout defence of the 180 persons arrested by the Imo State Police Command with several incriminating items, including pump action rifles and identity cards of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The state police command said those arrested, from Osun State, were heading for Anambra State, where the gubernatorial election is scheduled to hold on Saturday.
But the APC, reacting to the development on Friday, accused the police of acting out the script of the Peoples Democratic Party ahead of the election with the arrest.
The party said those arrested were election monitors from Osun State but labelled as thugs.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Friday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the report that a ‘crack team’ of the police in Imo State had arrested 180 ‘armed hoodlums carrying fake voters cards, official identity cards of INEC and independent Observer identity cards’ is nothing but tales by the moonlight.
The statement said: “Those who were arrested by the increasingly partisan police are election monitors from Osun, who are members of the Justice and Equality Organization, an INEC-accredited election monitoring NGO. With INEC having trained key officials of the accredited election monitoring NGOs, those trained are now training their members in readiness for the election. Those trained by INEC are in Owerri.
“Those whom the police have labelled as thugs are members of the Justice and Equality Organization. They are in Owerri for training ahead of the election. They chose Owerri because of its proximity to Anambra and its affordable hotel costs. None of them is a member of the APC, despite the insinuation by the police, and none is armed, because you don’t need guns to monitor elections. Any weapon exhibited by the police must have been procured by them to justify their gaffe.
“The only offence that the arrested election monitors have committed, in the eyes of the police, is that they are from a staunchly APC state with zero tolerance for the do-nothing, bumbling PDP.”
Meanwhile, the APC has called for extra vigilance from all Nigerians in general and the party’s members and supporters in particular, in order to thwart any attempt by the police and their collaborators to ruin Saturday’s election.
The party said the need for vigilance has been heightened by the fact that key institutions of state that should ensure a level playing ground for all parties in the election appear to have been compromised, going by the blatant partisanship of the police and the seeming inability of INEC to prosecute electoral offenders, including Willie Obiano of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, who has been proven to have registered multiple times.
It implored all the APC agents for Saturday’s polls to pay particular attention to the accreditation process.
It added: “In line with the INEC Manual for Election Officials, the number of accredited voters must be counted and announced loudly for all to hear. Also, the number of voters in the Register of Voters in each polling unit must be announced loudly. Then the number of voters in the register and the number of accredited voters must be entered in Form EC8A and/or Form EC8A (1) before voting starts.
“None of our agents should sign the result sheet without accurate numbers of voters in the register and the number of accredited voters being duly recorded in the necessary columns in the Forms.”
For the umpteenth time, the party called on INEC to ensure that Saturday’s election is free, fair and transparent.
It also urged security agencies not to allow themselves to be used to hinder the right of the people to elect their own leaders, because the world will be keenly monitoring the election on Saturday.
Keyamo, in a statement made available to the press on Friday, said: “We have been briefed by the All Progressives Congress (APC) of the following facts:
“1. That on Monday, 11th of November, 2013, and Tuesday, 12th of November, 2013, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in collaboration with the Independent National Electoral Commission conducted training for accredited independent election observers who are to observe the Anambra State gubernatorial election scheduled for Saturday, 16th November, 2013.
“2. That on Thursday, November 14th, 2013, the accredited observers who participated in the training above, met at Disyne Hotel located at Owerri, Imo State, for further training of their members ahead of the Anambra State gubernatorial election scheduled for Saturday, 16th November, 2013.
“3. That to the utmost dismay of the innocent and patriotic election observers, at about 2:00pm, the hotel where they were undergoing training was surrounded by heavily armed police officers acting on the instruction of Mohammed Katsina, Commissioner of Police, Imo State, who arrested the entire 120 persons undergoing training.
“5. That the entire accredited observers are currently in detention at the Imo State Police Command for no offence.
“We however, cannot fathom or comprehend the rationale behind the actions or decisions of Mohammed Katsina, Commissioner of Police, Imo State, mentioned above, as same are totally untenable in a civilized and democratic society.
“We cannot imagine why accredited election observers, who were specifically trained by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in collaboration with the Independent National Electoral Commission, to observe/monitor the Anambra State gubernatorial election, should be arrested and detained less than 24 hours to the election.
“We think that this is one of the grand plots to rig the Anambra State gubernatorial election scheduled for tomorrow by crippling genuine election observers and allowing fake observers to observe the process.
“In the light of the above, we call on the Inspector General of Police to order the immediate release of the 120 accredited independent election observers currently in detention at the Imo State Police Command so they can perform their patriotic duties tomorrow.”
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