We’ve ‘lost confidence in INEC boss’ — National Youths Alliance

Forum 1 year ago

We’ve ‘lost confidence in INEC boss’ — National Youths Alliance

The National Youths Alliance has called on the anti-graft agencies to beam their searchlight on the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), led by Professor Yakubu Mahmood, saying they were not comfortable with the conduct of the February 25 Presidential and Legislative Polls.

While passing a vote of no confidence on the INEC boss during an interactive session with journalists, the National spokesman of the group, Comrade Obande Gideon alleged that INEC’s conduct of the February 25 Election was below the acceptable standard.

He said that President Muhammad Buhari took time to package a well-designed electoral process aimed at bequeathing a credible election to the nation, however, the INEC chairman allegedly sabotaged the process.

According to the text of the briefing made available to our correspondent in Kaduna, Comrade Obande added that the INEC boss derailed the process by deliberately refusing to allow the transmission of the results electronically and in real-time in order to allow the servers to be tampered with.

“Prof Mahmud Yakubu is the biggest obstacle to Nigeria’s electoral voyage to free and fair elections. He promised Nigerians a credible election but reneged on the promises.

“We are calling on Prof Mahmud Yakubu and his resident electoral commissioners to explain how they spent over N400 billion given to them to conduct the 2023 general election.

“In the same vein, we are calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions (EFCC), Independent Crimes and Related Commissions and other anti-graft commissions to call Prof Mahmud and commissioners to explain the rumours that INEC servers were about to be hacked, hence the refusal of INEC to upload the results of the Presidential elections.

“We are also calling on the anti-graft agencies to investigate how Prof Yakubu used the N400 billion allocated to the electoral commission,” the group said.

Comrade Gideon said that the National Youths Alliance has lost confidence in INEC’s ability to conduct a credible gubernatorial election and legislative polls coming up by March 18.

Apart from rejecting the result of the February 25 Election, the group said it would approach the courts with the aim of making sure that all the irregularities allowed by INEC are corrected

He urged the youths to come out en mass to vote for their choice of candidates during the gubernatorial and legislative election, adding that, if they do not come out , the electoral body would allegedly allocate phantom figures to parties it favours.

“We are calling on the youth to come out massively next Saturday and vote for parties of their choice.Youth should also make sure that after voting, they snap results collated.

“Failure to come out massively and vote would only give INEC operators the leverage to allocate humongous and phantom votes to parties that it favours,” they alleged.