61
political parties have rejected the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) election guidelines for this year’s general election.
The
political parties, which are in disagreement with INEC, claim that over
eight obnoxious clauses were inserted into the election guidelines that
will ruin the 2019 elections, adding that Amina Zakari should also be
redeployed as head of collation centre and replaced with Federal
Commissioner in charge of Operation, Prof. Okechukwu Ibeanu, to ensure
credibility and balancing.
In
a statement Firday, the National Publicity Secretary of IPAC, Ikenga
Ugochinyere, stated that the political parties demanded retention of
2011 and 2015 separate accreditation time and separate voting time to
help forestall rigging with the presence of voters at the polling units
instead of INEC 2019 simultaneous accreditation and voting.
Ugochinyere
said the signed resolution and petition to the INEC Chairman, Prof
Mahmood Yakubu, and his federal commissioners by the 61 political
parties (majority of Nigeria 91 political parties) was submitted to INEC
leadership at the end of the emergency meeting of the country’s party
leaders.
He
noted that the political parties demanded announcement of accreditation
figures by 12noon on election day and recorded in a signed form and
given to party agents before voting starts to forestall manipulation of
election figures during collation.
In
his words: “Political parties demand stoppage of PVC collection 10 days
to election and disclosure of the total number of PVC collected on
polling unit basis to political parties. Political parties reject the
clauses in the guideline which allow unduly accredited voters to vote,
especially the clause that allows voters with PVC whose name is not in
the register of voters to vote.”
“Political
Parties demand transparency in collation and transmission of results
with accredited representatives of election observers and political
parties monitoring and reject the creation or usage of secret polling
units called voting point settlement and demand full list and location
of such units.”
He
further said that they insisted that INEC must meet with party chairmen
before final release of the election guidelines, adding that INEC
should desist from the use of former youth corpers and staff of federal
government agencies as ad hoc staff.
“Parties
threaten to pass vote of no confidence on INEC chairman if he goes
ahead to release the contentious guideline on Monday, January 12, 2019
without further consultation with political party chairmen.”
Ugochinyere
similarly said he was concerned about how INEC will react and
determine the fate of the 2019 election which seems to be rocked by
major crises.