Nigeria’s Elections: You boast as if INEC, judiciary are in your pocket – HURIWA slams APC

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, said it has observed with dismay, the ways, manners and boastful tendencies of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

The human rights association, raising the alarm, said this poses dangers to the survival of constitutional democracy in the country.

HURIWA said the attitude of the APC appears to show that the political party in power at the centre may have pocketed or swallowed the Judiciary and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

By so doing, the group noted that the leaders of the national ruling party have been boasting that the party will win all future elections, adding that this was the case before the Edo state governorship poll and achieved it.

HURIWA in a media statement challenged both the nation’s judiciary and INEC to defend those constitutionally created, protected and guaranteed institutions from being overwhelmed by the APC by enforcing their mandates in accordance with the provisions of the constitution which created each of these two strategic pro-democratic institutions as Independent of the executive branch of government or the political party of the president of Nigeria.

HURIWA warns that “the immediate risk inherent in this boastful attitude of the All Progressives Congress is that if the party continues to manipulate the electoral process using her domination of the central government to corner election victories illicitly, then voters’ apathy will become more pronounced leading to either a one-party state which is totalitarian state or democracy may cave in and collapse to give way to anarchy.”

The Rights group called on Nigerians to “speak out and mount pressure on INEC and the Judiciary not to be subservient to the political party that controls the central government.”

HURIWA said that INEC and the judiciary must not allow the APC or any political party to create the impression that it has pocketed and swallowed them.

In the statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, the group, said the national chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Ganduje, has continued to boast that the party will win all coming elections when he confirmed that the ruling party will capture the Southwest geopolitical zone in the next round of elections.

HURIWA recalled that earlier, Ganduje had boasted that the party is set to take over the political structures of Rivers State, boasting that the state belongs to the governing party.

HURIWA has therefore warned the “APC not to deliberately design and impose illegal mechanisms for the manipulation of elections because free, transparent, peaceful elections are the determinant factors that give life to sustainable democracy and sustainable development.”