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Ben Dunno, Warri
Foremost rights group, Committee For Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) has criticized the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over non provision of electoral kits for the observers that would be monitoring the elections nationwide, stating that this would be the first time observers would be experiencing such treatment.
Faulting the electoral umpire claim that it could not provide for the kits due to paucity of funds, CDHR National President, Comrade (Dr) Kehinde Prince Taiga, noted that INEC under Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had received the largest funding in the history of conducting elections since the establishment of the Commission.
While explaining that in 2011, 2015 and 2019, INEC ensured that all election observers were given a complete set of kits which included their tag, jacket, face cap, flash drive, Election duty stickers for cars and writing materials, Taiga queried why INEC under the present dispensation would give them only a tag to work with this time.
According to him; “This is the only time INEC would be given just tag to election observers monitoring polls across the country and we are surprise why this is happening as we are very much aware that this very INEC under Prof Yakubu has received the highest budget interns of funding by the present government since the inception of the Commission”.
“INEC this time around did not just treat election observers unfairly interns of kits, the body also reduced the number of the accredited membership forwarded to it by the various civil society group that had shown interest in monitoring this election and that goes to show that INEC was not too keen in having this election duly monitored”.
“We are even more surprised that this is happening when the federal government had approved all the budget of INEC and the Central Bank had acted in accordance to the federal government’s directive by releasing all the money that had been approved for the electoral body for this election”.
“We however want to assure of our commitment to monitoring the elections and making our objective report at the end of every process known to the public in the interest of transparency and credibility of the exercise”, he stated.
