GROUP EXPRESSES DOUBT ABOUT INECs CREDIBILITY
The Human Rights Writers Association HURIWA is expressing doubts about the impartiality, credibility and independence of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the Rivers re run elections. The group says dabbling into partisan politics of security forces taking orders from the presidency has also created doubt as they work for the government at the center. They call on Nigerians to blame the national hierarchy of All Progressive Congress (APC) should violence break out in December 10th 2016 re-run elections in Rivers State into the National and State Assemblies.
The call came in a statement signed by its National Coordinator Emmanuel Onwubiko urging Nigerians to stand up and demand the National Assembly’s actions to save the nation from eventual implosion by properly carrying out dispassionate oversight functions on INEC. It says there is need to comprehensively overhauling the Constitutional provisions to take the electoral panel out of the suffocating control of the Presidency. HURIWA has also observed that INEC as currently constituted has displayed shocking disposition to wreck the foundation of multiparty democracy in favour of a one party state to be controlled by the party in power at the center.
The Independent National Electoral Commission according to the group has through various misconducts in the just ended Ondo, and Edo elections clearly demonstrated a penchant to derail genuine democracy in favor of a one party state. It also blames the Nigeria Police for showing excessive partisanship by putting the life of the Rivers State Governor at risk through the eleventh hour inexplicable withdrawal of his Chief Security Officer and for failing to charge the Port Harcourt based printer caught recently printing INEC election result sheets illegally to court.
It warns that the present leadership of INEC is bent on manipulating all elections in favor of the party in power at the center and if they carry through till 2019 then Nigeria may witness a post-election Civil War.
