Regina Ogwuche
A leading pro-democracy and non-governmental body, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has described last Saturday’s presidential election as a fake and a monumental mockery of justice just as it has encouraged the presidential flag bearer of the leading opposition party, Atiku Abubakar, to explore the legal option which he has opted for.
According to HURIWA, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s officials committed a more striking and satanic crimes than the alleged billionaire kidnapper, Evans.
It accused INEC of manipulating the outcomes of the presidential polls in favour of All Progressive Congress(APC).
The group wondered why some persons including government officials are celebrating over the massive electoral thefts done by INEC but are silent or supportive even as Evans, the kidnapper, is being prosecuted.
HURIWA has charged Atiku to invest his resources and time towards building constructive and formidable opposition platform that would galvanize the public towards actualization of holistic electoral reforms to guarantee free and fair polls in the future.
In a statement by HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and the head of legal, Sylvia Nneka Okonkwo, HURIWA described the presidential poll conducted by the Prof. Yakubu Mahmood – led INEC as “the most predatory and roguish political enterprise that has ever happened in the twenty century world.”
“The election was anything but peaceful, transparent, free and fair, just as the collation of results at the national level was choreographed to appear like a scenario whereby a robbery gang took their time to allocate the looted fund to themselves whereas the victims are left to agonise and pass through trauma. The European and so called observers from ECOWAS; AU and Commonwealth were bribed to endorse the sham elections by INEC”.
“The election witnessed the most brazen acts of deprivation of the right to vote technically and systematically implemented by INEC against the southern voters and most especially, voters bearing Christian names because of the widespread perception that Christians would normally not vote for a government that did nothing to stop the genocide against them by armed Fulani herdsmen.”
HURIWA condemned the electoral violence that trailed the polls in Kogi, Rivers, Bayelsa, Lagos States and the deliberate disenfranchisement of Igbo voters in Lagos and Sabon Gari, Kano by the political godfathers of those states in collusion with INEC.”
HURIWA stated that the pains of the manipulation of the election may take years to heal and called on like-minded ideological citizens to organise themselves and champion the cause of achieving total electoral reforms to make the electoral body truly independent.”
HURIWA also called on the police to arrest and prosecute all those who disrupted the polls as captured by the vigilant cameras of patriots Nigerians, which are circulating on verified accounts of several credible statesmen and women of truth.
