…REC Cannot Be Trusted To Hold Free, Fair, Credible Election
…Naira Redesign Opponent Should Approach National Assembly Not Instigate Rebellion
Less than five days to the February 25 presidential elections, Labour Party (LP) presidential campaign organization has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to recall and redeploy the Lagos State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Olugbadebo Olumekunmi, over alleged lack of stakeholders confidence in his ability to conduct a free, fair and credible poll in the state.
The party said that the REC has by his antecedents in Osun State demonstrated that he could not be trusted with electoral matters.
The Director General, LP presidential campaign organization, Akin Osuntokun, on Monday in Abuja, told journalists that there was fear that the REC could be influenced by candidates from opposition political parties who “are already saying that the currency swap policy of the federal government was targeted at them.”
He also criticized the contracting of popular transport union leader, MC Olumo, to provide logistics for INEC, adding that for the commission to guarantee a credible election in the state, “justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.”
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Osuntokun however expressed hope that the “shenanigan” of the state REC would be checked by the recent deployment of a new Commissioner of police for Lagos State, Idowu Owohunwa, who took over from Abiodun Alabi.
Similarly, the Obi-Datti campaign team warned Nigerians against allowing themselves to be “used as cannon folders by duplicitous politicians lest they become unwitting victims of sham populism and rank opportunism. Here is a refresher of the hew from which the Kaduna governor is cut.”
The party was reacting to remarks by the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, asking residents of the state to continue the use of the old N500 and N1000 notes, in contraption to directives by President Muhammadu Buhari.
El-Rufai in the broadcast announced that “For the avoidance of doubt, all the old and new notes shall remain in use as legal tender in Kaduna State until the Supreme Court of Nigeria decides otherwise. I therefore appeal to all residents of Kaduna State to continue to use the old and new notes side by side without any fear. The Kaduna State Government and its agencies shall seal any facility that refuses to accept the old notes as legal tender and prosecute the owners. If need be, we shall take further consequential actions according to the law”.
But Osuntokun in his remarks condemned the governor, noting that “If he had responded with a minuscule measure of the alacrity (he has demonstrated on the potential inability to subvert the oncoming elections with cash) to these prior inter-ethnic sectarian crisis, thousands of lives would have been saved. Rather he was busy radicalizing and stoking the fire of bigotry and parochial chauvinism” in the state.
He explained that those against the directives on the naira redesign policy issued by Buhari “initiate impeachment proceedings at the National Assembly, not embark on internal insurrection and rebellion.”
This is as he also took a swipe at the Presidential candidate of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, who he alleged that “Since the infamous pronouncement of the “Emilokan” principle by the presidential candidate of the APC, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria has been subjected to the full measure of utter selfishness and duplicity inherent in this concept.
“At his ill-starred appearance at the Chatham House, Tinubu was heard on open mic urging his followers not to take prisoners in his obsessive desperation to win the forthcoming Presidential election.”Snatch the ballot boxes”. He urged his followers.
“Regardless of the merits or demerits of the currency redesign policy, Tinubu has done us the favour of intimating us of how he intends to “snatch the ballot boxes”.
The only logical inference from this self-identification is that more than any other competitor, he had planned to outrightly purchase voters at the presidential election-as you buy a goat at the cattle market.”
