Ahead of the 2015 elections, the Alliance for Credible Election (ACE) has warned that the poor planning by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could undermine the elections.
The civil society organisation, which accused INEC of “sleeping and snoring” its way to 2015, warned that with the way the electoral body was acting, logistics problems were bound to affect the elections in a negative way.
ACE also said charged the merging All Progressives Congress (APC) to ensure that only credible persons are given positions in their arrangement or else the merger would lose credibility before Nigerians.
Speaking at a press conference in Abuja, the general secretary of ACE, Mr. Emma Ezeazu, lamented that INEC had not presented to Nigerians what its preparations were as far as voter registration, transfer of voters and constituency delimitation were concerned.
“We think that INEC is sleeping and snoring its way to 2015. There are no preparations on the table whatsoever and they are waiting until 2015 where they will present us with a fait accompli of logistics problems, at which time they will begin to write that certain things are not provided and then logistics will diminish the level of credibility of the election yet again.
“The continuous voter registration is not being done. The mechanism for transfer of voter register is not on ground. Constituency delimitation which has not been done in 12 years is also there. For instance, the FCT had a population of 1.4 million to 1.5 million between 2006 and 2007, compared to today where we have about 3.4million people. Yet we are still have one senatorial seat and two House of Representatives seats. Representation is obviously poor for a population that is always increasing. I am using FCT as an example; imagine the situation in other states.”
He also faulted INEC for not distributing copies of the review party guidelines for civil society organisations to commence mobilisation of electorates.
Ezeazu said it was important to support the merger of the opposition, and warned “if it turns out to be business as usual, then it will be problematic.”
“If they select people that come with a baggage that is so negative then it merger becomes problematic abinitio. They have to choose people that does not have baggage otherwise it will become status quo. So they need to address the concerns of the people by the quality of leaders they choose,” he advised the opposition parties planning a merger.
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