Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), on Thursday, demanded the immediate resignation and arrest of the entire management of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) led by Prof Mahmood Yakubu for wasting N355bn to conduct shoddy polls that has been discredited by Nigerians and international observers as NOT free, NOT fair and NOT credible.
HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, also called for the arrest and prosecution of all INEC’s director of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as well as the Minister of Telecommunications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami; and the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta for alleged economic sabotage of the ICT system of transmitting election results during the February 25 presidential and National Assembly polls.
HURIWA aligned with opposition parties in their protest that INEC officials at the polling units refused to upload election results electronically to the commission’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV), as stipulated by Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022.
HURIWA said many Nigerians thought that the introduction of the IReV and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the accreditation and electronic transmission of votes will change this year’s polls and make it transparent.
However, as noted by opposition parties, the results by INEC showed “monumental disparities” between what the party agents signed and what INEC officials announced in Abuja.
HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “There is no doubting the fact that INEC under Prof Mahmood Yakubu failed the entire Nigerian people by promising us what he can’t deliver on: many Nigerians, especially the youths, for the first time had faith in the electoral process and came out to vote but Yakubu and his co-travellers squashed the hopes of the masses, wasted the N355 billion budgeted for the polls only to bring in the APC candidate, Bola Tinubu to replace an APC President, Muhammadu Buhari. This is daylight robbery!
“It is essential to note that the decision of INEC to resort to the manual transmission of results compromised the integrity of the entire electoral process. But instead of Yakubu heeding the voice of reason by opposition parties who called his attention to it during the national collation of results in Abuja, the INEC chairman vehemently refused and in defiance went ahead to announce the sham results! How pathetic! How complicit!
“In fact, aside from the opposition parties, foreign observers and elder statesmen in West Africa in the country to monitor the elections called Yakubu’s attention to do what is right by following the laws on the transmission of results but he wouldn’t have any of their pleas. He shunned the wise counsels of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan and John Mahama to simply comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 on the collation of results for the presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25, 2023.
“Mahmood and the entire INEC management should be arrested immediately and sacked for flagrant disobedience of the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 on the electronic transmission of results.
“HURIWA also called for broad audits by foreign-based firms and auditors like Anderson auditors into the humongous amount spent by INEC on the polls. 400 billion naira spent on the sham election by INEC has just gone down the drain because despite the huge amount, INEC couldn’t perform a simple task of conducting a free and fair election.”
