Why Ethnic Cleansing should be avoided in the distribution of Permanent Voters Cards for the 2015 General election by Intersociety
www.odogwublog.com brings you the last
press statement of the Intersociety on INEC and
its preparedness
.....................................
Ref:
INTERSOC/SE/003/3/015/INEC/ABJ/NG
Professor
Attahiru M. Jega
Chairman,
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
INEC
Headquarters, Plot 436 Zambezi Crescent
Maitama,
P.M.B. 0184, FCT, Garki, Abuja, Nigeria
Sir,
Consequences
Of Importing Ethnic Cleansing Into The Distribution Of Permanent
Voters’ Cards In Nigeria
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Part One
(Democracy
& Civil Liberties, Onitsha Nigeria, 13th March 2015)-The
leadership of International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of
Law formally acknowledges your Commission’s letter to us dated 17th
February 2015 and referenced INEC/CH/GC/073/1. The
referenced letter follows our earlier letter to your Commission dated 10th
February 2015 and titled Healing The Wounds Of 2015 Polls’ Shift: What
INEC & Service Chiefs Must Do. We also received another letter
from the Chief of Defense Staff of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria dated 25th February 2015 relating to the same issue. We have
since replied or responded to the two referenced letters. Our response to yours
was contained in our public statement dated 24th February 2015 and
titled INEC Chairman’s Letter To Intersociety: Our Position.
A copy of it is hereby attached for your perusal.
Our Involvement In Pre-Election Advocacy:
We have
over the years frowned at the age-long attitude of the CSOs in Nigeria, which
pay little or no attention to pre-poll advocacy and much attention to poll
monitoring. This is fundamentally wrong and it is caused by foreign donors’
interest; which appears focused on monitoring of election and issuance of
reports. Our irrevocable position remains that CSOs must proactively and
actively engage electoral process at all times and electoral
process includes announcement of election dates, registration and
updating of voters, issuance and distribution of temporary or permanent voters’
cards, general management of the National Register of Voters by your
Commission, processes and procedures for the polls, party primaries, election
campaigns, pre election court processes, distribution of poll materials, pre
election security, election proper, announcement of election results and
declaration of winners and losers; post election security and court processes.
We are resoundingly glad that our entry into pre election advocacy as per 2015
polls in Nigeria will eternally remain a reference point particularly as it
concerns our exposition of PVC distribution fraud and its ongoing
ethnic cleansing handling styles.
Ethnic Cleansing In The Distribution Of PVCs:
We are
not in the know or aware of any pre election management in Nigeria’s history
that had suffered ethnic bias like the 2015 pre-election polls handling
particularly as it concerns the distribution and issuance of the Permanent
Voters’ Cards. For the first time in Nigeria, ethnic cleansing has
been so introduced and maintained as a major informal policy of INEC under your
professorial midwifery.
But for
our courageous exposition of the referenced grave anomalies, the 2015 polls
would have been conducted under clean up the slaves and enthrone the
slave masters circumstances. Fears of the foregoing are
still expected in the rescheduled polls.
Till
date, complaints of ethnic exclusion and ostracism in the ongoing
distribution and issuance of PVCs have remained torrential. In Lagos State,
with 40% non indigenous registered voting population, several complaints have
been made by non indigenes saying they cannot access their PVCs because some
compromised INEC staff connived with the State ruling party to deny them access
to their PVCs. Their PVCs are popularly believed to have been destroyed, hidden
or deliberately misplaced officially. Amuwo-Odofin, Alimosho, Yaba, Sulurere
and Ojo areas or LGAs are worse hit. Protests were recently carried out in the
State by the Union of Non-Indigenes in Lagos saying that 70% of them registered
to vote have been denied their PVCs. The group’s Chairman, Mr. Francis Abang
said they could not trace their PVCs where they registered as voters. The Lagos
INEC office merely responded by relieving two staff of their duties; yet the
problem remains fundamentally unaddressed (Source: Nigerian Pilot Newspaper
February 23, 2015).
Further,
the Plateau State branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria similarly
protested to INEC on March 2nd 2015 accusing your Commission of a
deliberate policy designed to deny Christians in the State of their rights to
vote by misplacing or hording their PVCs. One of the Christian residents in the
State recently told Intersociety how he accidentally ran into a
gathering in one of the electoral quarters populated by Hausa Muslims and saw
his PVC and those of his neighbors; over six kilometers away from his
registration center. He said himself and his neighbors have severally gone to
their registration centers in the State to pick their PVCs only to be told that
theirs are not available.
He also
told Intersociety that calls he made to his friends and relatives
living in some northern States ended with the same complaints. In Kawo district
of Kaduna State as well as in Nasarawa and Sabon Gari LGAs of Kano State, the
story is not different. PVCs of non indigenes and minorities are reportedly
destroyed, diverted, misplaced or hoarded for the purpose of denying them their
rights to vote. This is in addition to reported proliferation of registration
and voting centers in Muslim strongholds and scanty provision of same in the
areas populated by non Muslims and non indigenes and minorities. In all, there
appears to be deliberate disappearance, misplacement, defacing, diversion and
destruction of PVCs belonging to minority populations particularly the
Christians and non host residents in the North and Lagos State with your
Commission doing little or nothing to stop it. Excuses offered by your
Commission on this are not only infantile, but also a clear case of aiding and
abetting. Instances are numerous to mention.
Possible Hijack Of PVCs:
The
report of your Commission showing the number of PVCs so far distributed across
the country is steadily contradicted and rubbished by independent sources. This
has raised a deep suspicion of hijack of the PVCs by powers that be in
connivance with some compromised senior and junior staff of your Commission.
In
Imo State, despite your Commission’s latest update of 9th March 2015
showing sudden and sharp increase in the number of PVCs distributed in the
State; the registered voters of Owerri North LGA have slammed a civil rights
suit against your Commission at the Owerri Federal High Court.
As
reported by the Vanguard Newspaper of March 10, 2015; they prayed the court to
compel your Commission to revert to the use of Temporary Voters’ Cards owing to
your Commission’s failure to issue them with their PVCs. Yet your Commission
claimed in its referenced PVC distribution update of March 9, 2015 that a total
of 1, 707, 440 PVCs out of the total registered voters of 1, 803, 030 have been
distributed in the State. This simply shows that only 95, 590 registered voters
have not received their PVCs in the State. Imo State has 27 LGAs. Our question
is: are these PVCs said to have been distributed in Imo State, in the
right or wrong hands? In Kogi State, the Channels Television reported
on March 7, 2015 the alarm raised by the electorates in the State over denial
of their PVCs contrary to your Commission’s claims of high PVCs distribution in
the State (926, 013 PVCs out of 1, 350, 883 RVs or 68%). In all these, is it
not correct to say that your Commission designed PVCs and Card Readers not to
ward off poll rigging but for the purpose of ethnic cleansing in
the 2015 electoral process?
Theft Of PVCs:
As
reported by the Vanguard Newspaper of February 27, 2015; over one million PVCs
have been stolen across the country since August 2014. Some of the States where
PVCs have been stolen according to your Commission are Rivers, Edo, Ebonyi,
Anambra, Delta, etc. Your Commission has failed woefully to apply the wisdom of
Eze-Ulu (chief priest) and his only son Oduche in
the famous Bottled Leopard (Novel) as it concerns the need
to embrace the white man’s religion with caution. On the same note, your
Commission ought to embrace the ICT with caution. It is like operating a
computer without external hard disk. Steady stealing of PVCs clearly shows that
ICT age is indeed garbage in garbage out and that in ICT world,
there are two traditional owners, operators and beneficiaries: malicious
entities and lawful entities. For instance, while there are steady
productions of anti viruses with their advancements, there are also steady
productions of viruses with their advancements. In all, there must be immediate
or remote malicious intents behind proliferation of PVC thefts across the
country. The same wisdom above ought to have been applied by your Commission in
the foregoing as well as the Card Reader controversy.
Under-Age Voting Population:
It
saddens our heart that your Commission has adamantly refused to speak publicly
or frontally addressed the issue of under-age voters majorly found in the
Northwest and the Northeast zones. As recently as 2014, tens, if not hundreds
of thousands of under-age voters turned out with their Temporary Voters’ Cards
and successfully collected their PVCs at your Commission and under its watch.
Their bodily ages are between 10 and 14 years registered by your Commission as
18 years and above. It is our firm view and conviction that this dastardly act
is possibly geared towards shoring up the Northern Muslim population in
realization of Presidency for Northern Muslims at all costs project.
Despite raising the issue in our recent letters to your Commission with
accompanying demands; this barefaced infraction of the Electoral Act of 2010
and the 1999 Constitution appears to have remained condoned and abetted by your
Commission. Some of the recent pictures of the referenced under-age voters are
hereby attached.
Uneven Voting Accreditation Procedures:
We have
not rescinded our fears over the foregoing; instead, they have deepened. Just
like the gross lopsidedness inherent in the distribution and issuance of the
Permanent Voters’ Cards as well as registration of voters and existing polling
units in the country; the possibility of your Commission applying to the letter
all the voting accreditation procedures in the South during the rescheduled
polls particularly the Presidential poll and relaxing same in the North
particularly in the Northwest and the Northeast is very likely.
It has
remained our irrevocable position that no matter the advancement of PVC’s anti
poll rigging technology, once voting accreditation is compromised through group
violence, threat of violence or official conspiracies; which appear to be the
order of the day in the Northwest and the Northeast, any voting or balloting
that takes place can never be detected. Because of scientific and ethnic
corruption of your Commission’s 2015 polls’ midwifery, we still find it very
difficult to hold that the contrary will be the case in the referenced zones of
the Northern Nigeria. Your Commission’s competence, ability and willingness at
ensuring strict application of, and adherence to all voting accreditation
procedures including use of card reader and PVCs in
all the 119, 973 polling units across the country in the referenced polls
irrespective of ethnic and religious landscape or grouping; have steadily
diminished in the eyes of Nigerians and international watchers.
119, 973 Polling Units Or 150,000 Polling Units In Nigeria?
We have
observed consistent references of your Commission including its National
Commissioners, Chairman and Public Relations Officer to “150, 000
Polling Units” as the number of polling units in Nigeria where the
polls will take place on 28th March and 11th April 2015.
It is a public knowledge that for the purpose of the 2015 polls, the 1996
polling units of 119, 973 polling units are to be used. This is as a result of
the cancellation of your Commission’s earlier plan to lopsidedly create
additional 30, 027 polling units in August 2014. We firmly demand, in line with
the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act of the Federation 2011 that
your Commission should publicly disclose the reasons behind its consistent
reference to “150, 000 Polling Units in Nigeria” since
January 2015 instead of the existing and generally recognized 119, 973 polling
units.
Yours
Faithfully,
For:
International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law
Emeka
Umeagbalasi, B.Sc. (Hons.) Criminology & Security Studies
Board
Chairman
Uzochukwu
Oguejiofor, Esq., (LLB, BL), Head, Campaign & Publicity Department
Chiugo
Onwuatuegwu, Esq., (LLB, BL), Head, Democracy & Good Governance Program
Obianuju
Igboeli, Esq., (LLB, BL), Head, Civil Liberties & Rule of Law Program
CC:
1.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation
2.
The Chief of Defense Staff of the Armed Forces of Nigeria
3.
The Director General, Directorate of State Security, Federal Republic of
Nigeria
Why Ethnic Cleansing should be avoided in the distribution of Permanent Voters Cards for the 2015 General election by Intersociety
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Saturday, March 14, 2015
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