Why Jega can't be trusted —Clark
Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, Ijaw leader, and convener of the South-South Peoples Assembly has called for the removal of INEC boss, Attahiru Jega.
According to him, his position was informed by Jega's inconsistencies and lack of transparency including the controversial allocation of over 30,000 polling units to the north, and skewed distribution of permanent voter cards.
Clark who is also the convener of the Southern Nigeria Peoples' Assembly said “Jega should go. We believe he should go not only because of inefficiency; we believe he is working with some northern leaders to declare a northern presidential candidate the winner of the March 28 election, that's Buhari. And to do that, he is not thinking about the success of the election of that day. If there is confusion, he will still declare Buhari the winner and say any aggrieved person should go to court.”
Clark said further in an interview with Vanguard on Sunday ” The northern leaders are alleged to have boasted that they had set up a committee to liaise with the judiciary, northern judges in order to give them favourable judgment. And they have employed 34 lawyers 14 of which are Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN. In fact, they have started going to court. So everything we said in our press conference has come to pass. They have started taking Jonathan to court that he is not qualified. The number of SANs prosecuting that case shows clearly that it is no ordinary person that took President Jonathan to court. It is being done between the APC and the northern leaders”.
Clark who maintained that Jega was not indispensable added ” he is just first among equals. There are about 13 national commissioners in INEC. If Jega has lost the people's confidence to conduct election, any one of the others can be made to act to oversee the elections on March 28 and April 11. We are not running away from the elections despite all the intrigues.They should hold. We will watch him.”
He however pointed out “We will not believe him, but we will see what will happen. If we say without Jega the elections would not hold, they will say we want elongation of tenure which Jonathan is not contemplating. But we have asked that he should go.And if the President does not want to remove him, he should have the honour and feeling that he is no longer wanted by the people of Nigeria to conduct free, fair and credible elections.”
Clark who alleged INEC lied about its preparedness queried ” How prepared is INEC? How prepared are the people of Nigeria? Well, I think Nigerians are prepared for the elections if all the materials are provided by INEC. A situation whereby we do not have PVCs for about 23million Nigerians particularly in Lagos and other places, that is not good enough. INEC has made it difficult for people to have voter cards. They are discriminating against certain areas where they think Jonathan has support.”
He said further ” How do you describe a situation whereby Lagos State, the most sophisticated and educated state in this country, has not been able to secure up to 50% of voter cards compared to Borno, a war ravaged area where the people have left their homes and non-indigenes have deserted but which has 80% voter cards? Let INEC explain that situation”.
Clark alleged further “And we alleged at that conference that some northern leaders collected money from some governors who parted with N167,000,000 and that has helped the northern leaders to secure 150 laptops for each state of the North. They gave them to some INEC officials to use to have double registration, to increase the registration in the North. Why did Jega not allow similar things to happen in the South? But apart from these irregularities, in the PVCs distribution, INEC is not ready for the polls. For instance, producing the PVCs, INEC awarded the contract to a local contractor from Kano and they decided to produce this material in Abuja. We have the video, the photographs of that mini-factory, where they were producing the PVCs.”
“But when they couldn't cope, they decided to contract it out to a company in China. And, as we are talking, some of the PVCs have not arrived. Some arrived Lagos sea port two weeks ago. So what we are saying is that Jega was not ready; one, he has not been able to start the training of about 700,000 ad- hoc staff all over the country. If he has started in some places, majority of the areas have not been covered.”
“And having regard to the technology involved in PVC, the card readers are not ready. The few that are ready have manufacturing defect, some of them are not functioning and they have not been tested to see whether they can do the job for which they were acquired.”
Vanguard
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