Politics
…appeals to Nigerian voters to reject payments for ballots
WITH the successful conduct of the general elections held in South Africa on 29 May 2024 to elect a new National Assembly as well as the provincial legislature in each of the nine provinces, a call from the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has gone to the National Assembly of Nigeria to mandate the Independent National Electoral Commission to understudy the proceedings of the South African elections with a view to learning the multifarious positive and constructively democratic values embedded in that peaceful, transparent and credible poll. HURIWA commended the electoral umpire in South Africa for demonstrating transparency and accountability which made the South African just ended election free of frictions, just as the Rights group showered praises on South African election commission for maintaining its institutional independence, the Rights group has called for constitutional amendments to remove the appointing of INEC commissioners and Chairman as a sole duty of the President but to provide adequate tenure protection for the Independent National Electoral Commission officials to safeguard free and fair elections.
HURIWA recalled that this last election in South Africa was the seventh general election held under the conditions of universal adult suffrage since the end of the apartheid era in 1994. The new National Council of Provinces (NCOP) will be elected at the first sitting of each provincial legislature, the Rights group said the fact that the African National Congress which suffered huge loses from the overall poll, nevertheless commended the process as free, fair, transparent and credible, signposted that every right thinking Electoral umpire in Africa have a lot to learn from the South African electoral commission to mainstream constitutional democracy in Africa.
In a media statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, the Rights group stated that although South Africa is known for a lot of violence and high crime rates, but it noted that the election was conducted in a relatively peaceful atmosphere devoid of interruptions by armed thugs, HURIWA has also encouraged the political parties in Nigeria especially the All Progressives Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party and other mainstream political platforms including the Labour Party of Nigeria to copy those positive signs of the collective decision of South African political elites to desist from enlisting the services of armed hirelings and street urchins armed by politicians to unleash bloody violence to disrupt electoral process. HURIWA said because politics in Nigeria is seen as the fastest route to inordinate wealth therefore political aspirants set up armed fighters to deploy them so the electoral process can be violated with impunity to make it possible for them who lack credibility to buy their ways into political offices by all means.
HURIWA is also appealing to the Nigerian electorate to note that in South Africa, the voters were never caught on camera collecting small bags of rice or being paid N5,000 per vote but for the fact that although millions of South African black voters are very poor and economically disabled, but they refused to be bribed or compromised to mortgage their electoral future to money bags but opted to exercise their constitutional freedom to choose their leaders, is a formidable force of positivity that other voters in the rest of Africa and especially in Nigeria should embrace so Democracy can be sustained in Africa.
HURIWA recalled that unlike in South Africa whereby their election was without any significant recorded violence, in ths 2023 general poll in Nigeria, a total of 238 violence and 28 deaths were recorded during the 2023 general elections, a report by the election violence monitoring and mitigation group under the aegis of Kimpact Development Initiative, a civil society organisation, said on Friday.
According to KDI, while a total of 98 of the total violence occurred during the February 25 presidential election, 140 were reported during the March Governorship and State House of Assembly polls.
The Executive Director of KDI, Bukola Idowu, stated these during the public presentation of the Nigerian election violence report on the 2023 general elections in Abuja titled, “The Quest for peaceful election: The report and documentation of KDI’s 2023 general election security interventions and assessments,” prepared with support from the National Endowment for Democracy and International Republican Institute.
He said, “In total, we had like about 238 cases of election violence, which is spread across the country, and not good enough and each of them has their perpetrators and then also the victims, which we have close to 900 victims, and at the same time, reported 24 cases of electoral death.
HURIWA however said there is no evidence to show that Nigeria wants to get the process of conducting election to become transparent because the current office holders want the corrupt status quo to be maintained due to their fear of change.
A.
-June 31, 2024 @ 15:28 GMT|
Tags: Bukola Idowu Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko HURIWA INEC
