Press Statement: dated September 19, 2014
Enugu –THE Igbo youths independent command organ, Ohanaeze Youth Council, after a duly conducted consultation on the arbitrary creation of additional 30,000 polling units by the Prof. Attahiru Jega led Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, just about five months to the 2015 general elections hinged on the 2006 lopsided and flawed census hereby calls for a fresh census before the conduct of 2015 general elections and total cancellation of the ill-appropriated polling units.
It is noteworthy that there was no census in Igbo land especially in the Igbo’s Southeast as there were no conducive atmosphere for the 2006 census exercise. It could be recalled that the erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 2006 census were flawed and badly conducted that it excluded tribe and religions that the millions of armies of the Igbo merchants and travellers were counted as part of their non-Igbo hosts tribes’ populations against all the known bases of census index and population solidity. It is highly appalling that the INEC Chairman Prof. Attahiru Jega could descend so low playing ethnic politics especially the dictates of the Northern irredentists’, ignoble errand roles and politics using the highly flawed, controversial and contested census as a bases for polling units delineation whereas it is on records that the Igbo’s accounts most for the so-called Northern populations that have been erroneously used to give North more polling units.
Expanding from our marathon National Executive leadership meeting in Enugu, we the NEC of Ohanaeze Youth Council grievously strike out against the dubious undercurrents of INEC as electoral umpire in the allocation of polling units to geo-political zones in the country and accused INEC of a premeditated attempts to rig 2015 general elections especially Presidential election in favour of the North’s. We hereby passed “a vote of no confidence” on the Chairman of the INEC Commission Professor Attahiru Jega, over his capacity to conduct a free and fair election next year.
In a resolution at the end of our meeting, Ohanaeze Youth Council, OYC NEC states that our consultation clutched on the decision on the 30,000 newly created polling unit proclaimed by INEC, and judged the whole exercise as crooked, in that 21, 000 were allocated to the Northern part of Nigeria, while 8,000 was allotted to the South with 1000 plus to FCT Abuja. We bring into being its deadly and curious gambits, for example, we don’t know the democratic hocus-pocus that allowed the Northwest, just one zone in the North, been allocated 9, 906 polling units while the whole Southern Nigeria (South East, South South and South West) was allocated 8,000 polling units. We also wondered who will vote in the Boko Haram’s terrorism-war ravaged Northeast where people are fleeing for their dear lives that was allocated 5, 201 new polling units by INEC that the entire South East of Nigeria with most populous population counting been allocated 1, 166 new units, while FCT alone was allocated 1, 200 units and South West with teeming Igbo populations coupled with the Yoruba’s allocated only 4, 160 additional polling units. We do not know of any rule and or sensibility measures that will permit the criminal acts of changing the electoral law cum rules few months to 2015 general elections, not to talk of obnoxious creations of superfluous polling units fewer months to the electioneering campaigns and voting time. This is a ploy for rigging at the electioneering polling units’ source that will continue to give the self-styled “born-to-rule Arewa North” flagrant influences and favours at the expense of the South. Why will the war-torn areas of the North especially Northeast be having more polling units than peaceful areas of the Southeast, South-south and Southwest? With existing INEC codes in existing units how will Prof. Jega want to transfer voters who have been given Permanent Voters Cards to the new polling units which had just been silly created?
We see the whole exercise as a ploy for the continuous giving undue advantages to the North, creating rigging at sources where 500 votes will return to the units where it was created with more magic and obtrusive electioneering manual that Nigerians will continue to grasp with elusive fights as presently seen with the skewedness we see at Senate and House of Representatives, presently. We, therefore reject in totality the new silly motivated election polling units as capable of leading us to cul de sac and nose diving politics capable of throwing the Nation into utter darkness and topsy-turvy disputative politics that will blow no one good. We therefore passed a vote of no confidence in Jega’s and his INEC’s ability to conduct free and fair and credible election if these supplementary ill-appropriated polling units are not cancelled, with immediate effect.
However, we believe with Prof. Jega’s, social variable and indexes and extant laws that census should be a guide on gerrymandering and election and economic planning’s, we denounced the 2006 census as a yardsticks because it did not tell anything about tribes, religions, states and cultural zones. Therefore not helping nor transferred the Igbo’s populations outside Igbo land to serving real census foundations and planning’s effectiveness. It could be recalled that there was no census in Igbo land because the census ill-informed Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB were ill-advised by their leaders to be attacking the census officials in Igbo haven that census exercises failed in Igbo’s Southeast and what was eventually used to arrive at Igbo’s Southeast census figures were based on guesses and approximated computations, which are unreliable. It cannot be relied on for planning elections and economy, accountability governance and service delivery.
Ohanaeze Youth Council, therefore, call for fresh census exercise that will reflect the social indexes and internal contradictions that will help in accountability governance, socio-economic and elections planning and sustainable development taking cares of tribes, religions and cultural strata. That we may know the actual populations of tribes, ethnic nationalities, States and religions! The census that will reflect (all) that worth its onions well and be census-wise shall be properly prosecuted with strident measures in place and Northern borders closed to avoid the influx and counting of non-Nigerian Northern neighbours easily mistaken Northerners and as well cows and guinea fowls that have always been dubiously counted as human beings giving the Arewa North false census figures. It is when this has been done that INEC can in all honesty conduct polling units’ delineation exercises and gerrymandering that will actually reflect Nigerian census indexes and population solidity.
We demand that Prof. Attahiru Jega should help us move the electioneering campaign and voting’s forward by accepting the present working (though flawed) census index used in past political gerrymandering and creation of polling units. Prof. Attahiru Jega is a good man that cannot afford to descend into ethnic jingoism and clannish battles that have been the jinxing woes of Nigeria. He (Jega) should not initiate dance like a good acrobatic dancer only to ends up in ignoble ethnic-politico-macabre dance like a perverse fellow who has lost touch with the lyrics. We suspect Arewa North multiethnic agenda in Prof. Jega’s current INEC’s ill-contracted polling units’ creation offensives and demand a retreat or resignation. We accuse Prof. Jega of carrying out the evil motives of those who do not believe in equality of status in Nigerian nationality madden with “born-to-rule-frenzy”.
We, Ohanaeze Youth Council declare INEC’s nascent 30, 000 polling units delineation exercise outrageous and demands outright cancellation of it to maintain the status quo with unreserved apology to Nigerian electorates or total showdown that will involve mass action inimical to 2015 general elections because Prof. Jega have already shown how the packs of cards have been dubiously loaded the way it will fall. We are of the firm conviction calling for a free and fair census exercise that will show the social index and population density that will eventually attest to the facts that Ndi Igbo are the most populous Nation in this British oversea investment contraction called Nigeria. Let the Igbo’s population indexes in the North, Middle Belt, Southwest and Southsouth be counted and transferred in the normal way of census exercise and the world will see us (Igbo) more populous than any. We can no longer go with the approximated census figures giving the Igbo Nation lesser states, river basins, political representations and economic gains especially based on the skewed 2006 census made possible by unfriendly paradigms especially MASSOB’s uninformed attacks on 2006 census officials in Southeast in blind veil agitation for the restoration of the Republic of Biafra.
For: OHANAEZE YOUTH COUNCIL
Uzochukwu .C. Uzochukwu Mazi Okwu Okwu
Secretary General, OYC Sec. BoT OYC
08037971206 08035555808
