Isiyaku Ahmed
President Muhammadu Buhari re-appointed Prof Mahmoud Yakubu as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman for another term of five years on Tuesday.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday charged the INEC Chairman to see his reappointment as an opportunity to improve the nation’s electoral processes.
This was contained in statement signed by the party National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja.
According to the statement, the reappointment entrusted Prof Mahmoud Yakubu with the fate, hope, and future of some 200 million Nigerians and the generations yet unborn.
Ologbondiyan said the party believed that miscarriages of justice in the country’s electoral process would have no place in the new order.
With Yakubu’s reappointment, he had been given an ample time and opportunity to redeem the image of INEC and prepare for more credible, free and fair elections in the country, he added.
“At least, with this reappointment whatever happens in our future elections cannot be ascribed to inexperience and lack of adequate preparedness on the side of INEC.”
“We consider this reappointment by President Muhammadu Buhari as an impetus to demonstrate a readiness for a free, fair, and credible election, which Mr. President had always promised to bequeath at the end of his second and final term in office in 2023.”
Ologbondiyan urged the INEC Chairman to spend about two years before the next general election to rejig the situation at the commission ….“Yakubu should work out appropriate electoral policies and guidelines and push for an amendment of the Electoral Act, in conjunction with the National Assembly, to give our nation a credible electoral process.”
“He must be mindful of the aphorism that to whom much is given, much more is expected and his reappointment, therefore, comes with a lot of expectations by Nigerians.”
