Jonathan’s supporters want Jega to resign, election to be postponed

Supporters of President Goodluck Jonathan have called for the
resignation and arrest of the Chairman of the Independent National
Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega.
The supporters, under the aegis of the Southern Nigeria Peoples
Assembly, led by a one-time information minister, Chief Edwin Clark,
made the demand at a press briefing in Abuja on Thursday.
Among those at the briefing were a former Minister of Information,
Walter Ofonagoro; a former Governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chuwuemeka
Ezeife; a former Commissioner in Bayelsa State, Chief Whisky Ayakeme;
Dr. Cairo Ojugboh and Senator Femi Okunronmu.
The Jonathan supporters also demanded the postponement of the February
elections.
They accused Jega of conniving with northern leaders to rig Jonathan
out of the election.
For example, they alleged that Jega had been hobnobbing with members
of the Northern Elders' Forum.
Specifically, the group said that Jega sent a representative to NEF
meeting under the leadership of a former vice chancellor of a federal
university (name withheld) on August 20, 2014.
They alleged that rigging methods were discussed at the NEF meeting.
Clark and the others said another meeting of the NEF held at Arewa
House, Kaduna, under the leadership of a retired ambassador, where the
Clark's group alleged that it was agreed that "all avenues must be
explored towards entrenching a president of northern extraction in the
forthcoming 2015 elections."
The Clark-led group added that a committee was put in place to liaise
with the INEC chairman and some Resident Electoral Commissioners in
the states to favour the North in the creation of additional polling
units.
Okurounmu, who read the prepared speech by the President's supporters,
said that NEF distributed 150 units of laptop computers to INEC for
each of the northern states.
He said the laptops were used by the commission's ad hoc staff in
collaboration with northern youth activists during the Continuous
Voter Registration.
Okurounmu said Jega allegedly directed the release of "Permanent Voter
Cards in their catchment states to emirs, district heads and top
politicians and not necessarily to the voters themselves."
He said this was responsible for the near 100 per cent collection of
PVCs in the northern part of the country.
He said, "This is the reason why Lagos State with a sophisticated
voter population of over 5.2million has not distributed more than
2.5million PVCs; even the war ravaged states in the North-East have
collected more PVCs than most southern states.
"Is this kind of selective treatment borne out of sheer nepotism and
primordial bias deserving of a supposed impartial electoral umpire?"
He added that investigations by his group had revealed that funds were
being made available for the northern operation of INEC by governors
of the All Progressives Congress in the region, saying each of the
governors contributed N100m and that "few Hausa-Fulani irredentist PDP
governors also contributed N167m to perfect this invidious electoral
fraud."
Okurounmu said that Jega must tell Nigerians where the the decision to
award the contract for the procurement of PVCs was taken and when the
contract was awarded.
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He said, "Jega should and must resign his appointment immediately as
the chairman of INEC because he has lost the requisite moral rectitude
to organise a credible election devoid of shenanigans of the northern
elders forum and their cohorts.
"There should be immediate postponement of the February 14, 2015
presidential elections to allow for the reconstruction, repositioning
and reprocessing of INEC to discharge its responsibility of conducting
an impartial election.
"We call for the immediate arrest of Jega for criminals masterminding
the procurement of PVCs for under-aged pupils in contravention of the
provisions of the 1999 Constitution."
He said the group would "employ and mobilise with all ounce of energy
at our disposal to ensure that there is no election in any part of
southern Nigeria" if the Federal Government failed to take decisive
action on the demands.
Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of the commission, Mr. Kayode
Idowu, said he had no comment to make on the issues.
But a source at the commission dismissed all the allegations, saying
that the integrity of Jega remained intact.
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