Professor Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman, Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), has failed to completely reveal the findings of the panel arrange by the fee to research allegations of underage voting throughout the10 February council polls in Kano State as a means of saving his personal face, Famzn News can reveal.
This web site may also reveal that the INEC Chairman is able to do the bidding of highly effective political pursuits, who've instructed him to halt the continued voter registration train throughout the nation as a means of making certain the prevailing contaminated register of voters is used for the subsequent normal elections, a state of affairs that can deny tens of millions of potential voters the chance to take part within the electoral course of.
The plot to discontinue the registration train is opposite to Professor Yakubu’s public posturing, which has seen him guarantee Nigerians on many events that INEC will abide by the supply of the electoral regulation that stipulates that the voter registration train can solely be stopped not lower than 60 days to the elections.
This implication of the supply is that the train will not be terminable earlier than December, provided that the calendar for the final elections issued by INEC signifies that the subsequent yr's will happen from February 2019.
Two weeks in the past, whereas being a visitor on a stay programme on stay Channels Television monitored by Famzn News, Mr. Rotimi Oyekanmi, spokesperson to the INEC Chairman, declared appropriately that the train will finish in December and resume on a steady foundation after the elections to permit contemporary registrants to be on the register.
Mr. Oyekanmi was responding on to a query by Maupe Ogun, the programme anchor, on the terminal date of the registration train.
On different events, Professor Yakubu was quoted by the media as saying that INEC plans to decentralize the registration train sooner or later to handle the challenges being confronted by potential registrants, a declare that raised the hopes of tens of millions of potential registrants that they might not be disenfranchised by the fee.
With the plot to secretly and illegally cease the train, the credibility of INEC will probably be additional shattered.
Already, the constancy of the electoral umpire’s processes and procedures have invited justifiable doubts in view of the truth that the plot to halt the train is opposite to what it has repeatedly stated. The doubts have been additional fueled by INEC’s refusal to simply accept accountability for the underage voter scandal in Kano State by claiming that the register utilized by the Kano State Independent Electoral Commission (KANSIEC) for the council polls within the state.
The underage voting scandal broke when pictures and movies of children voting surfaced on the social media a couple of days after the Kano council polls. It sparked allegations that that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had perfected plans to rig the subsequent normal elections, a state of affairs that compelled INEC to arrange an investigative panel.
On 13 March, Famzn News had solely reported that a few of the suggestions of the eight-man panel set as much as examine the scandal could also be rejected or watered down by the INEC Board as a means of deflecting accountability for the anomaly.
Two days after the panel started sitting, KANSIEC Chairman, Professor Garba Ibrahim Sheka, claimed that the pictures and movies of main school-age voters in circulation didn't originate from Kano, arguing that card readers weren't used within the council polls within the state, in a try a cover-up.
Professor Sheka’s denial was echoed by INEC, as clamour grew for the fee to audit its register. The fee itself had reported incidences of underage registration in Taraba State. The try at a cover-up gave the fee a breather till 25 March when the panel submitted its report, a doc that was not made public.
This sparked agitation for a launch of the total report, which Nigerians anticipated to verify or repudiate allegations that the election register has underage voters. However, INEC saved insisting that it didn't conduct the council polls, a truth already know.
Unwittingly although, Professor Yakubu stripped the Kano council polls of all credibility by saying that the state electoral physique didn't use the register offered by INEC in lots of cases, including that INEC was not accountable for any underage voting. His declare provoked extra questions than solutions, with observers asking if there have been no underage voters in locations the place KANSIEC used the INEC register accreditation.
They additionally questioned why INEC has been reluctant to declared the variety of underage voters in its register and what it plans to do sanitize the register and restore credibility to the registration course of.
Answers to the questions, analysts maintained, can solely be offered by INEC when it releases the total report of the investigative panel and never in snatches because it has accomplished. They reckoned that the partial reporting adopted by the fee might have inspired political events to acquire the total report by way of again channels, with the target of decoding its findings to go well with their respective agenda.
Analysts additionally imagine that events that receive the doc will use it as a gauge of what the fee plans to do within the subsequent elections and make satisfactory plans in direction of countering it.
The consensus, Famzn News noticed, is that INEC ought to publish the report on the web, the place it will be accessible to all, within the spirit of accountability.
“It is within the curiosity of the fee to abide totally by the executive requirements anticipated of such inquiry just like the Uwais Report that's accessible on the web and may very well be accessed by any people for various functions.
“The commission should publish a whitepaper on the report of the investigation, indicating what the INEC Board accepted or rejected,” an analyst instructed Famzn News.