Yusuf Maitama Tuggar
is the CPC governorship candidate in Bauchi State. He speaks on why he
believes the election on Thursday was a sham.
In your
petition to INEC you alleged that security personnel stopped your party
agents from escorting electoral materials to the polling units. How did
this happen?
Our party agents
witnessed the giving of materials to the various local government areas
and the tradition is that we escort the materials to each and every
local government, which means that we have a vehicle that will tail the
vehicle that is bearing those election materials. On their way to these
numerous local governments they were stopped at the checkpoints. The
police and army officials refused to allow them to tail the vehicle
carrying the electoral materials and it was just the CPC agents that
were stopped; the PDP agents were allowed to proceed. This smacks of
double standards and we protested against that.
In other
places, agents escorted materials in the vehicle that conveyed electoral
officials. Are you saying that the CPC agents were identified and asked
to alight from the bus while the PDP agents were allowed to proceed
with the materials?
From what I
understood, because I wasn’t there physically. My party chairman is the
one that told me. After he told me I called the authorities to
complain. From what my chairman said, they didn’t even allow the CPC
agents to be in the vehicle with the agents of the other political
parties. We had to take separate vehicles to tail the vehicle that was
carrying the electoral materials. When they got to the checkpoint they
were stopped and were not allowed to proceed. They had to spend the
night there. That was the beginning of the problem.
In fact the night
before the election in certain instances, vigilant security personnel
actually arrested people either thumb-printing or with ballot papers.
There was a Mercedes that was driven by military personnel. The Mercedes
has Lagos number plate.
So on what other grounds are you asking INEC to cancel the election?
For one, the
election was disrupted in my own polling units when six soldiers showed
up in a pick-up truck in Dubo Central Primary School, that is my home
town and where I was registered to vote. They showed up siren blaring;
they drove into the primary school where there were at least three
polling units. They chased everybody out; this was around 9’O clock when
accreditation was supposed to be in progress. They threw everybody out.
At that point I was alerted of what was going on. I was still in my
house I hadn’t come out for accreditation. I had to dash to the scene.
There was a crowd
outside. I forced my way in and saw the military vehicle; a white
Peugeot, I believe it was a 306; the vehicle did not have a licence
plate and there was an INEC box and they had taken electoral materials
from two polling units and we insisted that they had no right to do
that. That it was election time and the materials were INEC materials. I
went for my camcorder, as I was about shooting they ran away. They
hopped into their cars and drove away and we gave chase. They ran
towards the local government headquarters.
When they realised
that I was filming them they stopped in the middle of nowhere, got out
of their cars and started warning me. These were the sort of things that
happened. It was not just me that witnessed these things. In fact the
INEC commissioners who came along with Jega witnessed these
irregularities and infractions. It was the same all over the state. We
were calling the police, complaining, trying to get them to help us but
they did not respond. They only began responding when Jega came out to
the field. By then it was too little too late. In many places they
already had results by 9 and 10. How can you say there was an election?
You were
moving around on election day. But there is a directive from INEC that
candidates should not be moving around on election day. Didn’t you think
you were infringing that directive?
I was not moving
around town. What happened as I told you was that I was sitting quietly
in the house, getting ready to go out to vote when I got that report. I
ran to the polling units these guys decided to run away I gave a chase.
And that is what happened.
Are you saying that the snatching of ballot boxes and the violence was done by PDP supporters?
Of course, and in certain places soldiers and police, like what was clearly demonstrated in my own polling unit.
CPC supporters have been blamed for fuelling the violence in the state. What would you say on this?
That is just an
excuse to deprive the people of Bauchi State from exercising their right
to vote. Because what happened was spontaneous; it was terrible; it was
uncalled for. I can assure you that a lot of thugs participated in
that. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they belong to CPC. I can tell
you that there were PDP thugs on the night of the presidential election
that incited people to burn a CPC member’s car carrying the result of a
polling unit.
So you cannot say
that everybody that participated in the violence is a supporter of CPC.
These were criminal elements. In any case, does that mean you should
deprive that entire citizens of Bauchi State their rights to vote? Then
you should not pretend to simulate election and manufacture result.
To compel people to
vote under such conditions when you have a curfew and restriction of
movement the night before the curfew. When agents of the opposition were
deprived from moving around. These are not free and fair elections.
People have
argued that before the election, the CPC was not a united house. At a
point you had three gubernatorial candidates. They say the reason the
party did not do well is that you didn’t approach the election as a
united front?
We are talking about
two separate issues here. I’m not talking about the performance of the
CPC, I’m talking about whether there were free and fair elections. And
clearly going by the two previous elections you can see that CPC was the
party of choice for the people of Bauchi and you can tell if there were
free and fair election CPC will prevail. We are talking about the
infraction against the rules and regulation of INEC.
Are you going to challenge this election at the tribunal or are you going to wait for INEC to say something?
We will wait to see what INEC has to say.
What if INEC does not say what you want to hear?
It is not going to
be my unilateral decision. It is going to be the decision of the CPC in
Bauchi. It is going to be the decision of the party in the state and the
National levels. I will discuss with my deputy and we will decide what
to do.
