Six Presidential candidates and 16 political parties, yesterday, called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to postpone the February 14 presidential and national assembly elections to either March or April this year to allow the electorate collect their Permanent Voters Cards, PVCs.ballotboxThe parties also cited the insurgency in the North-East as another reason for their call to shift the elections and threatened that should INEC go ahead to conduct the elections as scheduled, they would boycott the exercise.
Addressing journalists in Abuja, yesterday, on the imperatives of shifting the elections, the Presidential candidate of the United Democratic Party, UDP, Godson Okoye, who spoke on behalf of the other presidential candidates and political parties, said postponing elections to March or April would reduce violence.
Okoye said after a critical look at the security situation in the country, especially in Yobe and Borno states and the inability of many Nigerians to collect their PVCs, there was the need to shift the election, adding that such shift would not have any negative effect on the hand-over date.
Besides, Okoye explained that many of the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, who registered in their communities before their displacement by the insurgents but now taking refuge in various parts of the country, would be disenfranchised if adequate arrangements are not made to resettle them in their various communities where they will have the opportunity to exercise their franchise.
He said there was no need to organise elections that would end up in violence because dates had been fixed, stressing that postponing the elections would cause no harm to the constitution as only the hand over date of May 29 that is sacrosanct.
Okoye said: “We the concerned leaders of political parties participating in the 2015 general elections, have observed some dangerous trends which if not checked, may negatively and adversely affect our democracy.
“The security situation in the country continues to deteriorate going by the reports from our colleagues and supporters across the country and mass movement of Nigerians. The level of violence and use of foul language by some notable politicians in the country, in clear breach of the accord signed by almost all the political party leaders at Sheraton Hotel Abuja, continues to rise exponentially.
“It is a known fact that most Nigerians have relocated to other parts of the country where they did not register, but feel safe as a result of insecurity in the northeast zone of the country.
“This group is even different from the Internally Displaced Persons who do not even have any other place to go, but the IDP camps across the country as their villages and towns have been destroyed.”
Stating that the concerned party leaders and presidential candidates want Nigerians and the world to know that they were desirous of conducting peaceful and issue based campaigns in the overall interest of the country, “a credible election cannot take place in the country where a geo-political zone of the country is excluded because of insecurity.”
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