Ekiti: Free, fair election impossible with militarisation, says MURIC
Muslim Right Campaign has said it would be difficult to categorise the Ekiti State governorship election as free and fair with the massive presence of military forces.
The group in a statement by its Director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola on Saturday, said elections should not be held under “coercive militarisation”.
Akintola, who described the presence of the military forces as “flagrant display of federal power”, doubted the intention behind the deployement of 36,590 security personnel for the election.
He said, “We are flabbergasted by this open invasion and flagrant display of Federal power. It is nothing short of Gestapo-style treatment. We strongly condemn this attempt at arm-twisting the liberty-loving and democracy-inclined people of Ekiti State into accepting doctored results of a gubernatorial election which the ruling party is hell-bent on turning into its favour.
“We have little confidence in the outcome of such an election. People should be allowed to freely choose their favourite candidates but this cannot be possible if they are being intimidated by a superfluous presence of security agents who are armed to the teeth.
” The fact that Governor Amaechi and other leaders of the APC were turned back by stern-looking soldiers when they attempted to join other party faithfuls in the last leg of campaigns in Ekiti speaks volumes about the intention of the ruling party and what it intends to use the security agents for.
“We recall that President Goodluck Jonathan and his vice were in the same state with a retinue of ministers to campaign for the Peoples’ Democratic Party. Why then is the Federal Government using soldiers and policemen to turn back governors and chieftains of the opposition party?”
The don, however, faulted the silence of the Independent National Electoral Commission in the face, of what he called, “outrageous maneuvers”.
He added, “This is symptomatic of a serious lack of level playing ground for all. Ekiti State has been turned into an enlarged Animal Farm where ‘four legs may be good, but two legs better’. INEC as an impartial electoral referee should have spelled out the rules capable of ensuring free campaigns and an electoral environment devoid of Hitleric invasion.
“For the records, the Jonathan administration will go down as the least tolerant to the opposition party in post-independence Nigeria.
“Aircraft ferrying members of the opposition are seized at will. Soldiers threaten to shoot governors.
” Policemen block the entrance to governors’ offices and compel them to make a detour. MURIC is constrained to conclude that Nigeria’s democracy in the present dispensation is a sham, a charade, a sheer hocus pocus.”