Bayelsa/Kogi polls: 62 party chairmen indict police, army, absolve INEC

The Forum of Chairmen of Nigeria Political Parties yesterday indicted security agents and politicians over the violence and electoral fraud that characterised the Bayelsa/Kogi states governorship elections.

It also called for an urgent conclusion of the process of the amendment of the Electoral Act, introducing electronic transmission of results from the polling units to a central database and electronic accreditation to minimise rigging.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on November 16 conducted elections in the two states. Candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won the elections in the states.

Addressing a world press conference at the end of a review of the elections in the two states in Abuja, the forum absolved INEC from the crisis.

A total of 62 chairmen of political parties attended the two-day review meeting.

Reading the communique,

Chairman of Action Alliance (AA), Kenneth Udeze, said the failure of the elections was not caused by administrative lapses or inefficiency of INEC but by the “treasonable actions of security agencies (Nigerian Army and Nigeria Police) who compromised the process and aided political thugs to disrupt the entire process and cart away electoral materials.”

The forum concluded that the roles of security agencies during the Kogi and Bayelsa states elections were largely reprehensible.

“Men in police uniforms were seen aiding thugs to carry ballot boxes and other materials from the centres and abducting polling staff. The 35,200 policemen deployed to Kogi State were all either standing by watching or were active participants guarding the thugs to carry the election materials and disrupt a hitherto peaceful and well organized process.

“The inspector general still owes Nigerians a lot of explanations on why the 35,000 policemen in Kogi were helpless and could not stop these thugs. Security agencies colluded with political thugs and this collusion is at the highest levels of the security echelon,” they said, calling for the probe of the police boss.

For the Nigerian Army, the forum said, “We condemn particularly and in very strong terms the involvement of the Nigerian Army in the election.

“It does not speak well of the army to have its personnel shown in viral videos aiding political thugs to hijack ballot boxes. This is the third time the army is getting involved in elections from a compromised position. It was in Ekiti 2014 and Rivers 2019 governorship elections that they were used to carry out election rigging and this trend must stop.”

The forum further noted that Nigerian politicians seem not to have learnt any lessons from the happenings of 1983 which led to the collapse of the Second Republic in 1984.

“All the indices which led to the fall of that republic are here again staring us in the face, still being orchestrated by politicians,” the forum stated.