Elders from the Southern part of the Nigeria have kicked against the recent increase in the number of poling units in some parts of the country.
Speaking, former Vice President Alex Ekwueme, queried the rationale behind the increase when the number of registered voters has reduced from 70 million to 57 million.
The elders, who met under the auspices of the Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly, contended that the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, has lost his credibility and called for his removal.
“As plausible as these reasons may sound to the architects of this voodoo and arbitrary allocation of polling units, the People of Southern Nigerian and indeed the Southern Nigerian Peoples Assembly view this invidious act as a script perfectly crafted for Prof Jega to implement, in continuation of the well known hegemonic agenda, by the enemies of our hard won democracy.
“The people of Southern Nigeria are not only appalled but strongly reject Prof, Jega’s claims and averment, whatever persuasions may have motivated this callous, insensitive, disparate, oppressive, and inconsonant decision to give the North a clear political advantage over the South contrary to the reality on ground.
“if this concocted manipulation of polling units is his clever design to give undue political advantage to he North, having clearly in ind the 2015 presidential election, we wish to remind him without equivocation that he has failed woefully in his decrepit mission,
“May we hastily remind him that he has lost his credibility, if there was indeed any, and he has lost the trust, confidence and respect of Nigerians. We do not need the lenses of prophets to remind Prof, Jega that he is, as a matter of fact, presently doing overtime on the INEC chair having shown his tendencies for ethnic bigotry, partisan parochialism, and primordial chauvinism,”
The Southern elders stressed that Jega sudden and whimsical reconfiguration which had no historical and scientific foundation, the existing 119,973 polling units were delineated on the premise of about 73 million registered voters.
They also noted that Jega has a lot more to do to convince Nigerians of his degree of altruism and broad mindedness by taking this consideration decision that clearly defies global best practices.
Therefore, the elders from the three zones of the South “condemn in the strongest terms the creation of additional 30,000 polling units which have been lopsidedly allocated in favor of the north.
“We do not subscribe to it. We do not see the necessity for it and we stand stoutly opposed to the process of its creation as it lacks any fundamental basis and therefore we do not accept it. We have lost confidence on Prof, Attahiru Jega as Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
“We call on President Goodluck Jonathan to without further delay reorganize the composition and structure of INEC to provide Nigerians the platform for free and fair elections”.