CSOs oppose call for removal of INEC boss

The Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group, a Civil Society Organisation, says call for removal of Independent National Electoral Commission chairman is an attempt to undermine the electoral process.
Executive Director of the organisation, Dr Chima Amadi, said this while briefing newsmen in Abuja on Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria recalls Southern and Middle-Belt Leaders Forum had in their meeting recently, called for the removal of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chairman.
The group alleged that there were accumulated indications that head of the electoral umpire may rig the 2019 election in favour of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Amadi said that as stakeholders in the electoral process, the group saw the call as the growing attempt by “ethnic entrepreneurs’’ to undermine the integrity of the electoral process.
He said: “We also see it as an attempt to diminish the democratic gains our country has made since the return to civil rule in 1999.
“If there are accumulated indications, they point to those successful governorship elections conducted in Bayelsa and Rivers by the same Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and won by the opposition parties.
“The Anambra governorship election is still fresh in our minds, in which the candidate of the ruling party lost in every local government area, to the extent that even the Ohaneze Ndigbo commended INEC.
“The same INEC, two weeks after, successfully concluded the Anambra Central Senatorial District election after staying the course in a protracted legal battle.”
He said that Yakubu, being “the same ethnic stock” with Buhari did not make him any less qualified or incapable of discharging the electoral and constitutional functions of his office.
Amadi said: “This call gladdens our hearts on one hand that the call was not based on competence; they did not say he had committed an infraction against the electoral law and laws of our land.
“They did not say that he is not qualified to be the chairman of INEC but that he comes from the same region of the country with the president.
“It is interesting that this same group was at work on the eve of the 2015 general elections when they called for the sack and arrest of the then INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega.
“They are doing the same as the 2019 general elections approach. It is their stock-in-trade on behalf of their sponsors.”
Also, the President, Public Interest Lawyers League, Aminu Mahmud, described the call as “intriguingly worrying.”
Mahmud said: “For these leaders to come out and pose ethnicity, I think they are posing flash points for an election where the first ballot has not been cast,” he said.
Similarly, Chairman, Partners for Electoral Reforms, Ezenwa Nwagwu, said that the call was “meaningless’’ as it could not be acted upon.
Nwagwu said: “INEC has closed the opportunity for gatekeepers and there is a reaction. I have continued to say that elections have gotten better and better; let’s not make that mistake.
“Things are getting better; violence in our elections is reducing; the process is getting more and more transparent.”
He said that the introduction of Permanent Voter Card and the Card Reader was the game changer.