Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has faulted the 2015 General Elections time-table recently released by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), saying it leaves a loophole for election rigging.
Speaking to reporters in Asaba, Delta State, after a stakeholders’ meeting of the All Progressives Congress, yesterday, Oshiomhole said “Nigerians cannot afford to continue to be a laughing stock even by West African standard”.
According to him, there are assumptions that elections will be rigged and therefore people are worried. INEC has to recognize that what determines the outcome of a match is the conduct of the referee and not necessarily the attitude of the players.
“I don’t understand why INEC wants to climb the tree from the top; they do recognize they have some explanations to make. Common sense demands that you climb a tree from the bottom for good reason.
“In any case, we are in this particular phase of democracy for fifteen years since 1999. What makes the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the collection of the Federating States.
“When you want to do Presidential Election first, and you are deviating from an old pattern, you have some explanations to do.
“But it is more so when under this particular leadership of INEC that they did National Assembly Election first last time, people did complain that they ought to begin with the House of Assembly.
“If you know you still have to do some test- running, you rather try some test-running with smaller units because the governorship election will not be taking place in the 36 States. The election into the Houses of Assembly can’t be as problematic as the Presidential election.
“INEC has to convince us that their policies have been formed by strategy they can speak to, that they need to speak to it by the commitment to deliver on free and fair election.
He said “all the noise that have heated up the polity points to the fact that the political class still take the people for granted, he maintained.
While urging the leadership of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to have a retrospective view of the already released time table, Governor Oshiomhole stressed that conducting the election from House of Assembly to Governorship and National Assembly before Presidential Election would pay-off for the 2015 election.
Governor Oshiomhole however commended the leadership of All Progressive Congress (APC), Delta State in their firm zeal and determination to move the party forward in the State.
He said “when you have a party that is not organized around godfathers, where you recognize that the party is about the people, free people must necessarily engage in free contestation because party and democracy is about contestation of ideas and not monologue but dialogue”, he stressed.
Governor Oshiomhole maintained that the All Progressive Congress (APC) is different from other parties based on its principle of popular participation, all inclusiveness rather than politics of exclusion.
He called on Deltans to come out and register in the forth coming APC membership registration exercise in the State slated for Wednesday 5th February, 2014.
