By Oluwatosin Maliki
Former presidential media aide, Laolu Akande, on Friday berated opposition lawmakers for not raising concerns during the screening confirmation of INEC Resident Electoral Commissioners who have links with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
It will be recallrd that the Senate two weeks ago screened and confirmed Etekamba Umoren, Senator Godswill Akpabio’s former aide and Isah Ehimeakhe, an APC card-carrying member as Resident Electoral Commissioners of INEC.
Akande who appeared as a guest analyst on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily programme said given
the alleged electoral abnormalities that was witnessed at the just concluded off-cycle Kogi gubernatorial polls, INEC has a long way to go in inspiring trust and confidence in the minds of electorates.
While calling for an improved electoral processes, Akande said a situation where reports of election results written by some alleged INEC officers even before the election took place calls for serious concern.
On the controversial nomination and eventual confirmation of the Senate President Godswill Akpabio’s former Chief-of-Staff as Resident Electoral Commissioner by the Senate, Akande said it is surprising that the opposition senators never voiced out their displeasure about it during the confirmation exercise.
According to him, he expected them to challenge the process, but instead, they all kept quiet out of fear.
“In such instances is the issue of the INEC commissioners, I think two or three of them is an issue we must keep alive. It is interesting that the PDP issued a statement and said that they are afraid that this current President or this government is leading to totalitarianism”.
“I said what did the PDP legislators say in the Senate when the confirmation of the commissioners were going on? What did they say? They just sat their clapping while Akpabio brings his former Chief of Staff to serve as INEC Resident Electoral Commissioners” he said.
Furthermore, he advised the electoral body to disassociate itself from some unscrupulous people.
He said, “There are still ongoing developments but I think the case, it was in Kogi where the results were written ahead of even the voting, still raises quite a bit of concern. I don’t want to go pound on INEC again hoping that they are trying to fix the issues”.
“But when you have a situation that results have been written out, I think it calls for some very profound reform of the agency itself if indeed you had your staff compromised up to the point that they released the result sheet and results have been filled”, he added.
“This kind of thing does not inspire any kind of confidence or trust but let’s hope that the commissioners and INEC leadership would be able to get to the bottom of this kind of storm,” Akande noted.
While, advising he said, “We must concede that the people that work for INEC are also Nigerians, so it is not so much trying to say that this is something that is just localised to INEC, but it remains the responsibility of the leadership of INEC, the chairman, the national commissioners, the resident electoral commissioners to ensure that the enormous trust that the Nigerian people and government have given INEC is protected and secure so that we can begin to build trust of the people in the government”.
