Shekarau: Elections can’t hold in volatile states

A former governor of Kano State Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau has said it won’t be safe to conduct elections in volatile states.

Shekarau said this in Abuja yesterday during an interview with State House correspondents.

He was at the State House to meet President Goodluck Jonathan on the latter’s planned visit to Kano next Tuesday for a rally of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

This was barely a day after the governors of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to emulate Afghanistan and conduct elections in their crisis-ridden states in 2015.

But Shekarau said it is not safe to conduct elections where there are threats to lives, saying that nobody should spit fire over it.

According to the former governor, the security of people’s lives should be considered far more important than any election.

“I always insist that let there be elections to allow people to decide their fate; but this does not necessarily mean we conduct elections under volatile situations,” he said.

“I still believe that it is going to largely be practical security reports on ground. If there are threats to lives, who are you going to govern, even if you win the election? So, it is not safe and I don’t see anybody spitting fire on it.

“The truth is that, let the state governors, the federal government and all concerned join hands together and assess the situation. What will the federal government gain or the INEC gain if they don’t conduct elections in any state?,” Shekarau asked.

On Jonathan’s scheduled visit to Kano, he said it was to celebrate, in the best possible way, his defection to the PDP from the All Progressives Congress (APC) and to assure all that Kano “is now fully a PDP environment”.