Northern group alleges INEC chairman working to suppress the region’s votes

“As a group, we made frantic efforts to get INEC to extend registration in our region following the shutdown of telecommunications.”

A Northern group, Arewa Citizens’ Watch for Good Governance, has called for the removal of the National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, ahead of the 2023 general elections in the country.

The group said they would petition President Muhammadu Buhari, the National Assembly, the US Embassy, European Union, for the failure of the INEC’s chairman to either resign or be sacked.
Adducing reason behind their calls for the sack, the group said the INEC chairman and his team were deliberately working against the interest of the north just to suppress voters in the region in 2023.

The group’s Chairman, Alhaji Mohammed Adamu while addressing a press conference in Kaduna on Sunday, also insisted that the INEC chairman and his team must go because they have been “morally compromised” to go ahead to deliver on the onerous task of conducting a free, fair and credible polls in 2023.

Besides, the group, he said, demanded the arrest and prosecution of the INEC chairman over his silence on the allegation by political parties that he was being pressured by some forces to deactivate the BVAS machine geared towards compromising the forthcoming polls.

He added that “As a group, we made frantic efforts to get INEC to extend registration in our region following the shutdown of telecommunications networks to enable our armed forces to carry out special operations in most Northwestern and North Central states, which fell on rocky grounds.

“The unfolding event is a pointer to one fact: INEC is deliberately working against Arewa, in their satanic ploy to suppress votes from our region, and swell that of Southern Nigeria through the registration of ghosts and foreigners.”

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Against this background, the ACWGG’s chairman, said, “relevant government agencies must arrest and prosecute Prof Mahmood Yakubu for trying to use his office to effect leadership change in our country in a satanic manner.

“That Prof Yakubu and members of his team should humbly resign so as to enable an independent probe into the allegation of insertion of foreigners’ names in our voters’ register.

“Where Prof Mahmood fails to resign, we will be forced to petition President Muhammadu Buhari, the Honourable Minister of Justice, the National Assembly, the US Embassy, the European Union, the British High Commission and other key actors in the electoral process on the danger of retaining the seeming compromised Prof Mahmood Yakubu.

“At the instance where we feel our demands are not being treated with needed gloves, we shall be forced to come out in our numbers and occupy all INEC offices in the region, including the national headquarters.”

The group, according to the chairman, however, “pass a vote of confidence” in President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration’s commitment to delivering credible election come 2023.