Yakubu deplores foreign interference in internal elections
• Nigeria beyond vote-buying, democracy growing, says Buhari
Cof the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has decried foreign meddlesomeness in internal elections through malicious deployment of the Internet. He noted that the menace was not only disturbing to developing nations like Nigeria but also to the developed ones, including the United States and western Europe.
Speaking yesterday at a workshop on Reporting
organised by the bloc’s Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC) in Abuja, Yakubu acknowledged the pivotal role of the media in free, fair and peaceful polls.
The fourth estate of the realm, he observed, remains the most reliable instrument through which participation and inclusivity are encouraged. The workshop, which centred on capacity building, professionalism and elections management and ethical reporting, drew participants from across West Africa.
Represented by a National Commissioner in the commission, Mustapha Leke, the INEC boss said the training was apt in view of upcoming balloting in the sub-region.
In the same vein, President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday declared that Nigeria had left that era where democratic norms were brazenly subverted and votes awarded to favoured candidates.
He assured the visiting members of the Joint United Nations, African Union and ECOWAS Good Offices Mission on Elections that the 2019 polls would be free and fair. President of ECOWAS Commission, Jean-claude Brou, said the team was on homage as it did to Senegal, Mali, Gambia and others which recently held polls. Besides, the president said the nation’s democracy was steadily improving with deeper understanding of cultures and tenets by the people as well as strengthening of those institutions that guarantee free and fair elections. Receiving the Governor General of Canada, Julie Payette, at the Presidential Villa, the Nigerian leader said he saw the evolving strength of democracy by contesting elections three times before winning the fourth in 2015.
Nbe certified polio-free in 11months if it sustains the intense immunisation exercise nationwide, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has disclosed. The Executive Director, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, told reporters yesterday during the quarterly meeting of Expert Review Committee (ERC) on polio eradication in Abuja that the World Health Organisation (WHO) would have given the nation a clean bill of health but for the case reported earlier in the year in the North. He said: “Nigeria is very close to polio eradication. We have done over 25 months surveillance showing no wild polio virus cases in any of these areas. If this positive trajectory continues in the next 11 months, then we could achieve the feat.”