E-voting: OPC condemns amendment to Electoral Act

Frederick Fasheun-led Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) has condemned the recent amendment to the Electoral Act, describing it as anti- people and anti- democratic, even as he urged President Muhammadu Buhari not to sign it into law but instead return it to the National Assembly to make an electronic transfer of election results a compulsory component in the electoral process in the country.

President of the group, Otunba Wasiu Afolabi, also known as “Askari,” made the call on Monday in a statement made available to newsmen, as part of the body’s four-point demand, saying that the lawmakers’ refusal to endorse electronic transmission of results showed that they preferred to come into office not through the people’s mandate but through rigging and fraudulent elections.

According to OPC’s four-point statement, other demands made include addressed: “Asking Buhari to cooperate with Southern governors to end insecurity through the banning of open grazing and other related policies

“Warning Northern groups not to overheat the polity and to stop their confrontational posture to the South’s demand for power rotation and a Southern president in 2023;

“Demanding that security agents should call off the manhunt for Sunday Igboho and urgently release all those arrested in that despicable July 1 raid on his Ibadan home.”

The group posited that President Buhari owed it a duty not to sign the legislature’s Anti-people Electoral Bill into law “since INEC has said it has the capacity to transfer results electronically,” saying he would thus be writing his name in gold on the pages of Nigerian history if he should do such.

This was just as OPC recalled that former President Goodluck Jonathan modernised the electoral process by giving the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) card readers to authenticate the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and banish fake voters’ cards forever.

According to it, Jonathan will never be forgotten for that laudable innovation that enabled Buhari himself to win that 2015 presidential election during which card readers were used for the first time, querying: “What value will Buhari be remembered to have brought to the democratic process?”

“It beats the imagination that legislators who transact banking business and instantly get bank alerts on their phones and laptops, whose children’s JAMB and WAEC results come through SMSs, whose children take lectures and do exams online, will not ascribe to election results being transmitted electronically. It is very strange,” OPC said.

Furthermore, OPC expressed misgivings on the harsh voice of Northern groups against the suggestion by 17 Southern governors that the slot of the president, come 2023 should revolve to the South.

The group, while expressing disgust at the outburst of the Northern group, queried from where the misguided Northern youths and groups derived their sense of entitlement, arrogance and combativeness, among others.

“From where do these misguided Northern youth and Northern groups derive their sense of entitlement, arrogance and combativeness? Why do they feel that they must have their way on which zone becomes president and the South cannot aspire to the position?” OPC queried.

“OPC hereby urges true leaders of the North to take charge and caution their belligerent people to take things easy. Their arrogant posturing about power shift will only heat up the Nigerian polity,” it warmed.

Reminding the government that it owed citizens the primary duty of providing security, the group challenged President Buhari to join hands with Southern governors to halt the spiralling insecurity suffered by Nigerian citizens in the South through kidnapping, raping and ransom payment by Fulani herdsmen.

It affirmed that Fulani killers were not spirits, saying that the security agents usually looked the other way when these killers were grouping up to strike.

According to OPC, the police do nothing even when citizens provide information to pre-empt and prevent bloody attacks, adding: “Police and DSS know where these wicked people have their camps and formations but they would never go there to dislodge them.”

“And when the likes of Sunday Igboho organise themselves to defend the people, they are hunted down by state authorities. This is a clear case of double standard,” the group declared.

The group further posited that the kidnappings and killings ravaging the South justified the call by Southern governors to ban Open Grazing of cattle as a necessary step towards restoring security in their zone, urging the Federal Government to support the policy rather than fight against it, even as promised to provide support to enforce the ban throughout the South-West.

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E-voting: OPC condemns amendment to Electoral Act