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•Warns against use of military, other security operatives to surpress opposition
From Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) and the South-East Zone of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) South-East zone have called on the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to transfer Imo State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Prof. Sylvia Agu, in order to have a free, participatory and credible governorship poll on November 11.
The groups alleged the REC did not stand tall to be counted and respected owing to her poor handling of the earlier 2023 polls and, therefore, could not be trusted to organise and deliver a free and credible governorship election.
In separate letters to INEC boss signed by the Chairman Intersociety, Mr. Emeka Umeagbalasi and South East zone chairman of CLO, Mr. Aloysius Attah, they urged the Commission to comprehensively overhaul the Imo INEC and its principal departments including EOs, Administration, Operations, ICT, Voter Education, etc and address the anomalies arising from the 2023 Presidential/National/State Assembly polls in the state.
The groups alleged that several INEC officers were accused of playing different indictable roles to undermine the credibility of the polls, to the extent that the state Assembly poll in the state was the worst of it all and a ‘walkover’ for candidates of the ruling APC by “winning” 26 of the State’s 27 House of Assembly seats.
The Intersociety and CLO also added that “having comprehensively checked and monitored the goings on in Imo State ahead of the November 11 governorship poll, it had found that REC Sylvia Agu and 17 other top electoral officers including 11 EOs and six departmental heads drawn from the state INEC secretariat are grossly incapable of ensuring free, participatory and credible governorship poll in the state” and that the INEC national headquarters must address all the wrongs arising from the 2023 armada of electoral fraud and clean up and reposition the state’s INEC ahead of the November 11, 2023 governorship poll.”
