A non-governmental organisation and pro-democracy group, the
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has given the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) 48 hours to
rescind its appointment of Amina Zakari to head its electoral
committee for the collation of results.
HURIWA likened the appointment to “match-fixing”, saying it
shows clear signs that the forthcoming presidential poll has
already been “technically manipulated”, following the choice “of a
biological relation of President Muhammadu Buhari, Mrs. Amina
Zakari, to head the core committee to co-ordinate the collation of
results of the general election”.
HURIWA has also asked the National Assembly to declare a state
of electoral emergency and pass a vote-of-no-confidence in the
hierarchy of the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC).
They have also supported calls for dissolution of the election
management board and the appointment of a new team of “impartial
and patriotic Nigerians to head the electoral umpire and conduct
free, fair, transparent and unbiased general election”.
A statement by Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and Zainab Yusuf, the
group’s National Coordinator and National Media Affairs Director,
respectively, read: “We have just ended a six hours long national
emergency parley in Abuja of our core national leaders and the
leaderships of over 35 non-governmental organisations and our
attention dovetailed into the emerging but very extensively
ethically damaging national emergency now occasioned by the illegal
and immoral appointment of Mrs Amina Zakari, the blood relation of
President Muhammadu Buhari, to head the collation of results team
for the most strategic national election in Nigeria’s nascent
democracy, in which her uncle, President Muhammadu Buhari, is
desperately interested in winning a second tenure and is hotly
contested by some distinguished Nigerians.
“This aberration of this heavily compromised INEC is like making
a sister of a goalkeeper of one of the two competing football teams
as the central referee of the most competitive finalists’ match and
you expect that there will be fair play and justice. Doing such a
morally damaging action is like match-fixing. What has happened
today in INEC, with the ill-advised decision of Yakubu Mahmood to
give the most sensitive appointment to the biological sibling of a
major contender in the same electoral contest, amounts to the
electoral equivalent of match fixing.
“This current chairman of INEC is surely an agent of
destabilisation and electoral manipulation. We have, on many
occasions asked for the removal of the duo of the chairman of INEC
and the niece of the president, Mrs Zakari Amina, who is a national
commissioner in INEC because we have always maintained that she has
played less than dignified roles as INEC’s national commissioner in
the last three years to such an extent that almost all of the
elections conducted in the last three years in which she played
pivotal supervisory roles have always ended up being manipulated in
favour of the political platform of her uncle and the All
Progressives Congress whose tendencies have whittled down the
integrity and credibility of the electoral process in the
country.
“We are giving the INEC chairman 48 hours to rescind this toxic
decision or the organised civil society community will meet and
take a range of actions to draw the attention of the global
community to this criminality and outright rigging that has already
started to unfold.
“Nigerians of good conscience must reject this criminality of
INEC and we call on the National Assembly to rescue the February
presidential election from the clutches of hawks in the presidency
bent on rigging the election by all means and foisting an unpopular
winner on Nigerians, which may snowball into long drawn civil
strife with broad-based consequences for the survival of
constitutional democracy.
“Nigeria is about to be destroyed through carefully
choreographed electoral heist and the world watches without acting
to stave off the danger which could constitute the greatest threat
to Africa and the world.”