Ahead of gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly elections coming up across the 36 States of the federation this Saturday, the Muslim Media Watch Group (MMWG), has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC) and the various security agencies to step up their operations for peaceful, credible, free and fair elections.
This is as it posited that Nigeria is not ripe yet for electronic voting.
The Group in a press briefing by its National Chairman, Alhaji Ibrahim Abdullahi at the National Mosque in Abuja on Monday said having succeeded with the presidential and National Assembly elections penultimate Saturday, INEC and the affected security agencies should up the ante by performing better in the gubernatorial and States Houses of Assemvly elections by making them violence free and more credible .
In doing this according to the group, INEC and in particular relevant security agencies should nip in the bud, plots being hatched by criminally minded people in some states to forcefully manipulate the process.
He said: “As the Nation warms – up for the governorship and House of Assembly elections across the 36 states of the federation , we are worried about threat to peaceful election as some people are hell- bent on causing crises during the polls .
“The need for additional security plans to forestall breakdown of law and order during the elections this Saturday, cannot be over- emphasised because there is the fear that those whose candidates lost in the last elections, plan to disrupt peaceful process of the March 9, Governorship and House of Assembly elections .
“We therefore call on the Federal Government of Nigeria and in particular, the security apparatus of the country to redouble security presence and strength across all the 119, 917 polling units in the country this Saturday to forestall any rigging – driven violence before , during and after the elections .
“We are 100% in support of President Muhammadu Buhari’s earlier declaration that security operatives should deal ruthlessly with trouble makers, ballot boxes snatchers and other miscreants that may want to disrupt the exercise “.
On electronic voting, the MMWG National Chairman said the time for it has not come going by the way we are struggling to make success even with the manual voting system .
“Before we can be talking about electronic voting , we need to be very sure of achieving the best with the manual voting first in terms of its operations and outcomes .
“You can’t expect people who are not accepting results from manual voting in which they physically participated as credible , to accept outcome of any electronic voting .
“It may be the order of the day in advanced democracies , but we are in all ramifications, not ripe yet for it in Nigeria”, he explained .
He added that though the Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar had settled for litigation in the court of law over outcome of the presidential election held on February 23, 2019 and in which President Buhari emerged winner, but he coud still concede defeat to allow peace to reign in the land .
