Onitsha, Eastern Nigeria, Sunday, 12th March 2023 The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), Nige...
Onitsha, Eastern
Nigeria, Sunday, 12th March 2023
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of
Law (Intersociety), Nigeria’s leading democracy, human rights and rule of law
advocacy Organization since 2008 has noted with deepest dismay the remorseless
stance of the Independent National Electoral Commission and its Chairman (Prof
Mahmood Yakubu) over the Commission’s in-house brutal rigging of the Feb 25,
2023 Presidential Election. Intersociety is deeply shocked that despite widespread
public outcries and brazenness of the rigging, the 54 top officials of INEC
including Prof Mahmood Yakubu have remained unperturbed, unmoved and
remorseless. The worse of it all is that Prof Mahmood Yakubu as INEC Chair is
still going about parading himself as “professor of integrity and character”;
to the extent of “threatening the PDP and its Presidential Candidate (Alhaji
Atiku Abubakar) with a defamation of character lawsuit (for calling on INEC
Chairman to resign on the ground of lack of character and integrity). It has
also never been heard that a child is beaten and forced not to cry.
There Are No
Professorial And Personal Integrity And Character Left To Be Defamed
Intersociety makes bold to say that there are no more
professorial and personal integrity and character of the INEC Chairman left to
be defamed. It is also obvious that resorting to “threat of character
defamation lawsuit” by the camp of INEC Chairman is a ploy to intimidate and
muscle the fundamental human rights (rights to freedom from discrimination and
freedom of conscience and expression) of tens of millions of aggrieved voices
including victims of the INEC Chairman’s vicariously or directly coordinated
armada of presidential electoral fraud of 2023. By convention and law, INEC
Chairman is vicariously or directly liable for his conducts or misconducts,
actions or inactions or commissions or omissions in the performance of his
official duties. This is more so when Section 2 (3) of INEC Establishment Act
of 2004 clearly or unambiguously stated that ‘the Chairman and members of the
Commission shall be persons of unquestionable integrity’.
INEC And Its Chair
Must Open Up And Judicially Defend Its 2023 Presidential Poll Roguery
INEC and its Chair must be stopped from nefarious conducts
capable of plunging Nigeria into intractable dangers. The Commission’s resort
to “technicalities” and other escapist clandestine conducts are totally
condemned and must be unmasked. INEC must also be warned that this is not 2019
post presidential poll judicial proceedings fueled by judicial technicalities
and escapist loopholes. Intersociety has it on good authority that the
Commission’s recent decision to approach the Presidential Poll Petition for an
order to “reconfigure BVAS” was externally plotted and done in bad
faith-leading to the camp of the rigged in political party celebrating the
obtained order as “a game over verdict”.
On the contrary, Intersociety wishes to authoritatively state that the
INEC in-house brutal rigging of the 2023 Presidential Election will not go
unpunished and must be internationally coordinated to ruffle the feathers of
the identified 54 top electoral officials including the Chairman and Director/Deputy
Director of the Commission’s ICT.
Intersociety hereby throws its full weight and support behind PDP and
its Presidential Candidate (Atiku Abubakar) as well as Labor Party and its
Presidential Candidate (Peter Obi) for heading to electoral courts for
determination of the true and moral winner of the 2023 Presidential Poll and
who that emerged second, third and fourth. INEC is therefore strongly called
upon to stop hiding under the cloak of technicalities and escapist loopholes
and open up and come out boldly to judicially defend its coordinated 2023
armada of presidential electoral fraud. The Court orders granted to litigants
by the Presidential Tribunal must be fully complied with by INEC.
Time For Buhari And
Wike To Prepare Their Handover, Pack Their Luggage And Baggage And Retire
Intersociety seriously finds it morally reprehensible and
totally condemnable for outgoing President Muhammad Buhari of Nigeria and Gov
Nyesom Wike of Rivers State to be spending taxpayers’ funds in the media or at
international scene justifying their ignoble roles in the 2023 Presidential
armada of electoral fraud. Outgoing President Muhammad Buhari, has through his
media spokespersons, been going about justifying the INEC in-house brutally
rigged poll including calling on foreign respected Democracies to legitimize
the heist. As if the above was not enough, the outgoing Nigeria’s President is
also shockingly going about saying that “he has given Nigerians the most
credibly conducted presidential election in the history”. Gov Nyesom Wike, on
his part, has also been going about with taxpayers’ funds in the media
parroting why he did what did, claiming that the heist that took place in
Rivers State on 25th Feb 2023 was “to ensure that power is rotated back to the
South”; with the people of the South-East as “born-to-be ruled” since Nigeria’s
independence transition in 1957.
Totality of the above is nothing short of presidential and gubernatorial
canonization of illegalities and exhibition of shamelessness and impunity.
Intersociety hereby sees the above as deceitful and
deliberate distraction and diversion of public attention. We also make bold to
say that the duo of outgoing President Muhammad Buhari of Nigeria and Gov
Nyesom Wike of Rivers State are at the twilight of their tenure expiration and
what is expected of them is preparation of their handover notes and packing of
their luggage and baggage for purpose of permanently retiring from the polity.
Their ignoble roles in the 2023 armada of presidential electoral fraud must be
left in the hands, minds and consciences of Nigerians and posterity to judge
and take action. They must also stop making inflammatory, intimidating and
public anger provoked comments and allow those in the hallowed chambers of the
electoral courts to interrogate and make their unbiased findings. Outgoing
President Muhammad Buhari whose tenure comes to end on 29th May 2023; two
months and eighteen days’ time, owes Nigerians detailed explanations as to how
he governed the country for eight years.
The outgoing President’s scorecard must include state of
insecurity including ethnic and religious related killings, abductions and
disappearances; and property violence; death tolls arising from street
criminalities and properties and persons lost as well as security agencies’
unlawful killings, abductions, disappearances and wanton destruction of
defenseless properties. Outgoing President Buhari must also inform Nigerians
the extent he upheld the country’s Constitution and Nigeria’s Treaty Laws and
maintenance of ethnic and religious harmony and peaceful coexistence;
distribution of federal office appointments and national wealth; the pre 2015
inherited federal component of local and foreign borrowings and their present
figures and where and what the borrowings were used for; attraction of direct
foreign investments and current state of critical infrastructures and social
services including the present condition of federal composition or components
of roads, railways, airports, healthcare, water resources, agriculture and food
security, environment security and safety, economic development, employment,
industrialization and public-private-partnership, education growth or
undergrowth, justice and rule of law and social justice and human rights, etc.
Gov Nyesom Wike, on his part, must prepare his handover
notes and pack his luggage and baggage for purpose of permanently retiring from
the polity. The outgoing and strongly suspected public office conduct atrocity
perpetrator Gov must be reminded that time is no longer on his side to
rigmarole in frivolities and absurdities. He must allow posterity and future
circumstances to take stock of and judge him on what he did in office including
the massacre of more than 200 defenseless Obigbo residents and abduction and
disappearances of hundreds of others including abominable sexual violence
against dozens of defenseless Obigbo women by soldiers of the Nigerian Army
that he invited to Obigbo between 21st Oct and 21st Nov 2020 through a
Statewide media broadcast-leading to Obigbo Army massacre of 2020.
Emeka Umeagbalasi (Criminologist)
Board Chair @ Intersociety
Chinwe Umeche Esquire
Head, Democracy and Good Governance Program @Intersociety
Obianuju Joy Igboeli Esquire
Head, Civil Liberties and Rule of Law @ Intersociety
Chidinma Udegbunam Esquire
Head, Campaign and Publicity Department @ Intersociety
Contacts:
Phone/WhatsApp: +2348174090052
Email: info@intersociety-ng.org
Website: https://intersociety-ng.org
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