African Action Congress, AAC, has described former President Olusegun Obasanjo as “Nigeria’s foundational rigger” who lacks the moral authority to speak about electoral integrity.
Gatekeepers News earlier reported that Obasanjo in an open letter raised the alarm that danger is lurking around the country over the alleged compromise of the ongoing election process.
The former President further appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to prevail on the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, to stop the process and rectify the allegations raised against it from many quarters.
In response to this, AAC in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Femi Adeyeye on Tuesday alleged that “the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections held on Saturday, February 25, 2023 were not free, fair and credible.”
Adeyeye said, “It failed the basic tests of integrity and transparency as INEC together with the so-called major parties engaged in large scale vote buying, voter intimidation, vote suppression and results manipulation as evidenced by various reports from polling units and collation centres.
“All these, coupled with the lack of planning and logistical ineptitude displayed by INEC have produced the poisoned chalice the INEC chairman is serving to Nigerians on national TV as election results.”
AAC stressed that “We are not surprised because this was a disaster, we foretold.”
The party noted that, “It is on record that we warned during meetings of party leaders with the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu about the looming danger of not crying out for help before the elections. We saw the contrived cash crunch crisis and fuel scarcity as clogs that would mar logistical and personnel competence of INEC. Furthermore, INEC Adhoc staff were poorly trained and hurriedly mobilized, with election materials getting to units late if they got there at all. Some of the INEC adhoc staff were uploading selfies instead of result sheets!. This is so shameful for a country that is the technological hub of Africa.”
It added that “We also raised alarm at other meetings about the capacity of the INEC IRev server to withstand the traffic of result upload by unit presiding officers and download by Nigerians. We feared that the Commission may resort to manual collation but this was dismissed both by INEC and some of the parties who are now crying foul because they thought they were going to win, forgetting that a flawed process cannot produce a credible outcome.”
The statement read further, “The non-upload of the result sheets at the unit level after voting is a breach of the Electoral Act and the INEC Guidelines made pursuant to the Act.
“Section 60 (5) of the 2022 Electoral Act empowers INEC to prescribe guidelines for the transmission of election results. Pursuant to that subsection, INEC clearly stipulated in clause 38 of its Regulations and Guidelines that election results must be transmitted electronically via the BVAS after announcement at the polling units. In fact, the guidelines criminalize failure to comply with this provision. Section 64 (4a&b) of the Electoral Act, 2022 lends further credence to the transmission to the iRev before they are announced to Nigerians. Why is the rule being bent at this time? Our National Secretary who is also our national election collation agent has consistently raised this breach of the Electoral Act and INEC Guidelines at the National Collation Centre but the INEC chairman keeps dodging addressing these concerns.
“Our party cannot continue to sit and watch INEC continue in this illegality and perpetuate electoral injustice against the Nigerian people, this is why we have decided to withdraw our Collation Agent from the charade and illegality goin on at the National Collation Centre since our probing questions to the Commission have remained unanswered till this minute.”
However, AAC noted that “It is also important to state that Nigerians must be wary of the sudden activism of General Olusegun Obasanjo. He laid the foundation of rigging in the country, with his “do or die” elections and “garrison politics”. This is someone who superintended the most fraudulent elections in Nigeria’s history that even the supposed winner of that election, the Late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, had to disavow it at his inauguration and set up the Uwais Electoral Reform Panel.
“Let it be on record that as a party of justice, we would not support any illegality, even when it’s done against our contenders, and we shall also resist any form of extra-normal activity as a ruling class “solution” to the crisis at hand. We are calling on the ruling class to shelve their plans to constitute an interim government, as that would be their gain in this imbroglio. We strongly oppose the constitution of an interim government, and we shall mobilize Nigerians to resist such plan. We are warning again!”
The party, therefore, called on INEC to follow the law and its own guidelines and are calling for the cancellation of results not uploaded, collated and read from the server, in accordance with the Electoral Act and Guidelines.
It added, “Elections should be reconducted in areas ridded with vote buying, intimidation, violence, technical issues with BVAS and other malpractices stated by parties and independent monitoring bodies.”
