Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been challenged to initiate Electoral Act amendment that would legalise electronic voting in the country and remove military as the primary security agency during elections. 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Chairman, Uche Secondus, made the call at the party’s National Secretariat when he received  the Commission’s delegation from the Election and Party Monitoring (EPM) Department in Abuja, yesterday.

Similarly, former Governor of Ogun, Chief Olusegun Osoba called on the National Assembly to include electronic voting as part of the amendment to the Electoral Act.

Secondus advised INEC to initiate the amendment to remove the influence of the military on the election day.

He said in spite of a standing lawful court ruling that military should be kept at a distance during elections as secondary security, military had continue to involve in the electoral process.

“Nigerians have watched how the electoral body unable to control the military relinquished their responsibility to them and still curiously went ahead to authenticate such fraud. I am not going to bore you with issues that is well known to your commission in your reviews of elections, but I would like to urge your commission to move quickly and initiate Electoral Act amendment that will legalise electronic voting and remove the influence of the military as primary security on the election day.”

“The ruling APC, unlike the PDP, is not disposed to any electoral law that will prevent them from manipulating the system, we in PDP expect INEC to be at the forefront of the process to have legal frame work for the conduct of free, fair and credible election.

“Such legal framework should address the issue of security, electronic voting and collation of results and punishment for electoral offenders.”

The opposition leader, while stating that the sustenance of the country’s democracy depends on the impartiality of INEC, noted that the PDP and the international community expects nothing short of free, fair and credible elections from the electoral umpire.

“The survival and sustenance of our democracy rest squarely on the integrity of the electoral commission which will derive from the character and the impartiality of its operatives.

“Free, fair and credible election is exactly what PDP and indeed global democracy demand and expect from INEC,” he said.

Secondus also advised INEC to go back to the drawing board and ensure that it fully implemented the electoral model Nigeria copied from the U.S.

Secondus, however, said it had not been easy for PDP as an opposition party to operate.

Leader of the delegation and INEC Deputy Director of EPM, Musa Husunu, said they were at the PDP headquarters on a routine verification exercise on registered political parties.

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Husunu said eight teams were deployed by INEC to register political parties to verify evidence of their national secretariat in Abuja as specified by the Electoral Act.

He said that the commission was also interested in five copies of party constitution, list of national executive committee members, physical presence of national working committee members and party’s book of accounts.

The deputy director pledged that the delegation would communicate the party’s concern to INEC.

Aremo Osoba, who spoke at an event marking 160 years of journalism in Nigeria in Abeokuta, said that Nigeria had no excuse not to digitalise its voting process.

The veteran journalist, who spoke on the theme: “Re-inventing the Practice of Journalism in Nigeria, with emphasis on the influence of Social Media” said it was regrettable that the electoral process in Nigeria has been bastardised.

He renewed the call for the amendment of the Electoral Act, saying that vote buying, rigging and ballot box snatching were among the challenges plaguing the country’s electoral process.

“I’m shocked at what we have now (electoral process) because it is worse than corruption,” Osoba said.

The former governor stated that the inclusion of electronic voting in the Electoral Act would put an end to electoral fraud in Nigeria.

“The day we stop selling our votes, that day, we will get it right and start electing the right people into political offices. That is why I have been pushing for the amendment to the Electoral Act. Let us all support and fight for the review of the act. Let us fight for electronic voting.

“We need to go electronic in voting in Nigeria because Ghana has gone electronic; Kenyan has gone electronic; we have no excuse not to get digital in our electoral process; the day of analogue system is gone,” Osoba said.

He attributed the falling standard of journalism in Nigeria to poor remuneration of journalists, saying it was unpardonable that employers should owe salaries.

“It is an offence unto God and even man,” he said.

Gov. Dapo Abiodun of Ogun urged veteran journalists to use the celebration to appraise the influence of the social media on journalism practice. He disagreed with calls for death sentence for those who abused the social media as a tool for information dissemination.

He added that the proposed social media law before the National Assembly should not be seen as targeting or gagging the critical media or curtailing free speech. Rather, the governor said that the law should be seen as a way of holding journalists accountable for their reports.