The leader of the Northern
Elders’ Forum, NEF, Professor Ango Abdullahi has reacted to the National
Assembly’s re-ordering of 2019 elections time-table.
Abdullahi speaking with The Sun
said the call for reordering of electoral sequence by the lawmakers was based
on selfish reasons.
He stated that NASS members were
trying to reintroduce what the military did when they were handing over to the
civilian.
He said “They are the lawmakers
and they can do it but that means that what they are doing is in their selfish
interests. If they want to reorder elections, the proper thing to do is to have
presidential elections, National Assembly elections, state Assembly elections
and gubernatorial elections. In other words, it has to be four and not three.
You can put National Assembly and state Assembly election and the presidential
and gubernatorial elections together. It has to be two and not three. If you
want it to be three, then there is selfishness there.
“Another one is that people think
that we have had this kind of election that we are asking for before. In 1979,
we had other elections before the presidential poll. In 1999, we had other
elections before the presidential poll too. But all others that followed, it
was always the presidential before others. And do not forget that it was the
period of handing over from the military to civilians, so they conducted
elections in the rural areas before that of the presidential.
“There was no occasion where we
had other elections before the presidential poll during civilian rule. So, what
they are trying to do is to reintroduce what the military did when they were
handing over to the civilian. So, if you analyse it carefully, you would see
that what the NASS is doing is more of self-interests.
“But one thing that they do not
really know is that they even stand more danger because a sitting president is
in a position to do damage to those who want to contest elections and the governors
also are in a position to do damage to all those who want to go to the National
Assembly or state Assembly. The reordering of the elections would give them the
opportunity to do more damage to them if they so wish. So, there is not much
they think they would do. Why not let us have what we have been having. With
improvement in technology, the ideal thing is that all the elections should be
held the same day.”
Speaking on National Assembly
targeting President Buhari with Electoral act amendment bill, the elder
statesman said it was unfortunate if the bill was targeted at Buhari.
“If it is targeted at Buhari,
that is unfortunate. Buhari in 2003 had 4million votes and he was not in
government and in 2007, he had 6million votes and he was not still in government
and late President Umaru Yar’Adua said the election was compromised. In 2011,
without a governor or even a councillor, he had 10million votes and in 2015,
with the merger, he had 15million votes. And some are saying he had those votes
when there was no hunger, unemployment and so on and so forth, but that is some
people talking. But you cannot easily compromise your votes because of the
challenges that you can easily overcome.
“In 2003, Atiku had an
opportunity to work with late vice president, Alex Ekwueme. I was the media
director for Ekwueme and we were already thinking of how Atiku would run with
Ekwueme. But when we thought we had got far enough, Atiku changed his mind and
decided to go with the devil he knew rather than the one he did not know. And
when they were elected, before they were sworn in, a delegation came from
Adamawa to cooperate with Atiku so that he would take over from him in 2007.
That time I was writing my column ‘monitoring democracy’ and I wrote then that
the first victim of Obasanjo’s reelection would be Atiku.
“In the four years between 2003
to 2007, he spent most of the time fighting Atiku. He even tried to remove the
soul of the PDP who are mostly PDM members from the membership of the PDP and
what happened, Atiku ended up leaving the PDP to contest under the Action
Congress(AC). So many of these things, the struggle to undermine people would
lead to opposite results,” he said.
Buhari had on Tuesday turned down
the amended Electoral Act bill in letters addressed to Senate President Bukola
Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara.
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Tell them if they have ear let them hear, they thinks without them PMB will not win 2019 election.
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