Afenifere tackles INEC over plan to create new polling units

 

THE Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) has confirmed plans to create additional registration/polling units ahead of the 2019 general election.

 

In a memo it sent to Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) across the states, signed by its National Secretary, Augusta Ogakwu, the commission demanded for information for states in need of what it called Voting Point Settlements.

But there have been insinuations that the plan was part of a plot to give the Northern part of the country an undue advantage in the next general election.

In his reaction, the National Publicity Secretary of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Mr Yinka Odumakin, decried the move which he claimed was meant to rig the 2019 elections “through simple majority.”

“It is a move to rig the election and subvert Section 133 of the Nigerian Constitution. They are working towards simple majority to win the election and that is advance rigging. We are not going to allow that to happen. It is either we have a transparent election or we don’t have election at all,” Odumakin said:

The National Chairman of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Mr Sani Yagbaji, however, called for caution.

He told Saturday Tribune that INEC might have a noble intention to ensure that no one eligible to vote was disenfranchised, particularly those in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.

“If it is meant to take care of the displaced people, it makes sense since they don’t deserve to be disenfranchised. What INEC should assure us of is that it won’t affect the credibility of the process. There should be adequate supervision by security agents. That is our position,” Yagbaji said.

Speaking through his spokesperson, Rotimi Oyekanmi, INEC chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, admitted that the commission was actually planning to create new voting points based on a deluge of demands.

He said it was not meant for only states in the North.

The INEC chairman dismissed insinuations that his predecessor, Professor Atahiru Jega, was the brains behind the move to create the additional registration/polling units.

“The internal memo was simply a call for suggestions/inputs from the states, following the deluge of representations received from several new settlements across the country for the creation of new Registration/Voting Points.

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“Now, states were only required to submit their recommendations, which will subsequently be investigated/verified by another special committee to be set up by the commission. Thus, a final decision on this issue is still very far off.

“More importantly, the latest effort is neither an offshoot of nor being guided by what the commission under Professor Attahiru Jega tried to do. We are only trying to see how we can address genuine demands from citizens in new settlements across the country based strictly on merit.

“You will agree with me that our population has been expanding and new settlements are springing up everywhere.

To now paint our latest effort (still a work-in-progress) as though we are trying to favour one part of the country against the others is what I find distasteful,” Professor Yakubu said.

INEC under Jega had been accused of showing favouritism towards the North for allocating more new polling units to Boko-Haram occupied North-East than the South-West, which was peaceful and boasts two states with heavy populations – Lagos and Oyo states.

The South-East, which comprised five states, got almost the same allocation of new polling units as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

The Jega-led INEC had allotted North-West 7,906 polling units; North-East, 5,291 and North-Central, 6,318.

It, however, allotted the South-West 4,160 polling units, South-South, 3,087 and South-East, 1,167. The FCT got 1,200 new polling units.

Jega had said the additional polling units were meant to cater for the splitting of large polling units as well as new settlements not serviced by any existing units.

The current move by INEC is being viewed by Southerners as a ploy to grant the North numerical electoral edge.