Ahead of the General elections starting from February 16, this year, 61 registered political parties have rejected draft guidelines for the Conduct of the polls released by the Independent Electoral Commission , INEC, alleging that the new eight clauses were designed to ruin the elections.
This was contained in a statement made available to the newsmen in Abuja yesterday by Mr Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, National Chairman of the Action Peoples Party (APP) and the Publicity Secretary of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC.
The statement disclosed that the Political parties demanded for the retention of 2011 and 2015 separate accreditation time and separate voting time to help forestall rigging with the presence of voters at the polling unit instead of INEC 2019 simultaneous accreditation and voting.
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They also demanded for the announcement of accreditation figures by 12noon on election day and recorded in a signed form and given to party agents before voting starts to guide against manipulation of election figures during collation.
Other demands according to the statement, ” stoppage of PVC collection 10 days to election and disclosure of the total number of PVC collected on polling unit basis to political parties.
“Rejection of the clauses in the guideline which allow unduly accredited voters to vote especially the clause that allows voters with PVC whose name is not in the register of voters to vote
“Transparency in collation and transmission of results with accredited representatives of Election observers and political parties monitoring
“Rejection of the creation or usage of secret polling units called voting point settlement and demand full list and location of such units
“Want INEC to meet with party chairmen before the final release of the Election guidelines and the redeployment of Amina Zakari as head of collation centre and replacement with Federal Commissioner in charge of Operation, Prof. Okechukwu Ibeanu to ensure credibility and balancing
” Rejection of the use of former Youth Corps members and staff of federal government Agencies as Adhoc Staff”.
According to the statement, the Parties threatened to pass a vote of no confidence on INEC chairman if he decided to release the contentious guideline on Monday without further consultation with Political Parties Chairmen.
It added that the signed resolution and petition to the INEC chairman and his Federal commissioners by the 61 Political Parties (the majority of Nigeria 91 Political parties) had been submitted to INEC leadership after an emergency meeting of the party leaders.
and then