Professor Attahiru Jega
The prime socio-cultural organization of Nigeria’s Yoruba race, Afenifere, has decried the query which the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, issued Resident Electoral Commissioners, REC, from the southern flank of the country calling on him to withdraw it or “step aside”.
According to the group, the query said to be issued to mostly southern RECs over the rescinding of INEC’s recent plan to create additional 30,000 polling units gave Jega away as “becoming more dreadful to the health of the polity than the murderous Boko Haram”.
Afenifere, in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja by its National Publicity Secretary, Yinka Odumakin, could not understand why the query, it said was dripping with venom, would be issued the same day the INEC boss announced the suspension of the controversial additional polling units.
The statement reads in parts, “If it is true that the said query was issued on sectional focus on a matter in which the INEC chairman betrayed unpardonable primordial insensitivity, we are bound to conclude that Prof. Jega is becoming more dreadful to the health of the polity than the murderous Boko Haram.
“Even without its lop-sidedness in favour of Jega’s region of the country, the whole idea of creating new polling units a few months to the general elections was a product of inferior scholarship on election for a man from the intellectual region hailed across the country in 2010 as a “man of integrity” when he was nominated for the job in 2010.
“It is equally baffling that rather than addressing the glaring incompetence of INEC which have seen it bungling the distribution of PVCs for data captured four years ago, Jega would now be occupied with fighting a war of attrition within the commission.
“We are less than 90 days to the general elections and we have yet to see concrete preparations from the electoral body to conduct a successful poll. Given the importance of 2015 elections and all the predictions of the implications it holds for the corporate existence of Nigeria, we do not need a champion of fault lines at the head of the electoral commission.
“In the light of this, Afenifere advises Jega to withdraw the query immediately and concentrate on plans for the elections. However, if he is far too gone into his sectional agenda, he should step aside from INEC and move over to any of the fora promoting what he desires,” it noted.
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