…Raise alarm over alleged plot to rig Imo, Enugu guber polls

By Steve Oko

Civil Rights groups, International College For Rights and Democracy; and Eastern Democracy and Rights Coalition, have called on the international community to slam visa ban on four serving Nigeria Governors as well as 54 officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for their alleged roles in compromising the February 25 presidential and national assembly elections.

” We hereby adopt with deep appreciation, the Intersociety’s seven key demands listed as follows: slamming visa sanctions and other international travel, engagement and recognition restrictions on the serving Governors of Imo State, Rivers, Kaduna and Ebonyi States”, the groups said.

The groups said they had lost confidence in INEC and urged the Chairman of the electoral umpire to honourably resign and surrender himself for investigation.

They also expressed shock that “members of the INEC National Management Team fingered in the in-house brutal rigging of the 2023 presidential election are still parading themselves and going about without shame and remorse.”

A statement jointly signed by both groups said:”The worst of it all is that INEC Chairman; Prof Mahmood Yakubu still has the audacity to talk about ‘integrity and credibility’ including another round of empty or fake assurances ahead of the March 11, 2023 Governorship and State Assembly polls’.

” We are totally surprised that the entire INEC National Commissioners, 36 State Resident Electoral Commissioners, the Commission’s Director and Deputy Director of ICT and its National Chairman (Prof Mahmood Yakubu), numbering 54 have refused to voluntarily vacate their offices and apologized to Nigerians whose sacred electoral wishes were brutally subverted.”

The groups claimed of incontrovertible evidence of obvious manipulation of the polls, accusing INEC complicity.

“Apart from publicly evidential brutal rigging of the presidential poll, emerging facts from the Commission’s server and IReV portals have also put the Commission’s grossly uploaded results at grave variance with the ones roguishly announced and declared.

” We hereby call on 12 to 14 serving National Commissioners, 37 Resident Electoral Commissioners, Director/Deputy Director of ICT and Prof Mahmood Yakubu to collectively and voluntarily resign and vacate their offices with immediate effect.

“The Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Otuoke in Bayelsa State, Prof Teddy Charles Adias, must also resign as the University’s Vice Chancellor and barred for life from involvement in any election supervision in Nigeria or any part thereof.

“These are on account of his role in Rivers State where he served as the State Collation Officer and aided electoral fraud in connivance with Gov Nyesom Wike of the State.”

The group expressed rage over the massacre of innocent indigenous Nigerians by murderous herdsmen after the presidential poll.

They claimed that the senseless killings were a confirmation of the alleged Islamisation agenda.

“No fewer than 100 defenseless Christians have been slaughtered and their innocent bloods spilled by Jihadists who are foot-soldiers of the propagators of Nigeria’s State Jihadism and Radical Islamism, to celebrate the emergence of rigged ‘Muslim-Muslim Presidency’ by INEC.

“As a matter of fact, slaughtering of no fewer than 60 of this number occurred in Benue State alone where in four days or between 25th Feb and 1st March 2023, not less than 50 Christians alone were hacked to death in Kwande Local Government Area of the State.

“The killings were specifically perpetrated to mark “the winning of the presidential poll in Benue”. In all, not less than 100 Christians were hacked to death by Jihadist herdsmen between 10th Feb and 6th March 2023 in following States: Benue (Kwande and Guma), Enugu (Uzo Uwani and Nkanu East), Edo (Owan West), Ondo and Plateau States.

“No fewer than 5000 defenseless Christians were hacked to death in Nigeria in 2022, according to Intersociety statistics.

“We have carefully studied and observed with deepest dismay that ‘propagators of State Jihadism and Radical Islamism’ are behind the INEC in-house brutally rigged 2023 Presidential Election.

“The rigging was perpetrated in their desperate bid to transform Nigeria or any part thereof into ‘a radical, retrogressive, rancorous and corrupt Islamic Republic’ where social retrogression, backwardness, primitivism, barbarism, crude religiosity, violence and fears, blood and tears, chronic mass poverty, massive looting and squander-mania and abuse of power and public office will permanently remain the country’s corporate trademark and its policy and governance direction. “

Prominent among the signatories are respected US Democracy Campaigner, John Gregg and his Swiss counterpart, Berhard Warner; Board Chair of Ekwenche Research Institute, USA, Prof Justin Akujieze (a renowned physicist), Chairman of World Igbo Congress, Prof Anthony Ejiofor, Prof Jerry Chiedozie Chukwuokolo (a respected University Don).

Others are, the Chair, Global Igbo Leaders, USA, Amadiebube Mbama, Maazi Tochukwu Ezeoke (CEO, Njenje Media International) and Doctors Mrs. Nwamaka Iguh and Ngozi-Chuma Umeh (renowned Doctors of Law and University Dons).

Others are the Board Chair of International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), Emeka Umeagbalasi; Chair, Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), South-East Zone, Comrade Aloysius Attah and his Anambra and Enugu Chairs, Comrades Vincent Ezekwueme; Zulu Offoelue (Educationist); among others.