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By Christopher Oji, Lagos
Catholic Arch Bishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos Most Rev Alfred Adewale Martins has described those who want to disrupt the oncoming General Elections as enemies of the Country.
According to the Bishop, those who are clamouring for an interim government and threatening to cause problems before, during and after the elections should be treated as enemies of the country.
Martins, who spoke to Daily Sun after administering the sacrament of confirmation on 440 faithful, and blessing the Parish House at Our Lady Health of The Sick Catholic Church, Onipetesi Estate, Mangoro, Ikeja, Lagos, on Sunday, said that Nigerians should cooperate with President Mohammadu Buhari, who has repeatedly promised to deliver a credible election.
He advised that the president must not fail to honour his words and the promises to the international community, ” they are watching us and we should not ridicule ourselves before the international community. He must organise a free and fair election, so he should do everything possible to make sure that the 2023 General Elections must be free and fair and should hand over to the person who will win the election”.
According to him, those trying to foment trouble and those threatening others and trying to force them to vote for particular candidates should be kept out of circulation, ” it is wrong to force people to vote for a candidate that is not their choice, not to talk of telling them to take a snapshot of their thumbprint so as to convince them that they voted for the candidate they forcefully chose for them. This is where the security agencies, especially the police should come in. The police should keep such people out of circulation. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), also has a serious role to play. I don’t know if the law permeates electorates to go into pooling booths, but for the threat that people should take a snapshot of their thump prints, INEC should make sure that nobody should go into the polling booth with his or her phone.
“I believe that anybody who is asking that the election should be cancelled or that an interim government should be installed, that person is not a friend of Nigeria, such persons do not have the good of Nigeria at heart. What we should be doing at this point in time is encouraging the government to ensure that whatever is going to affect the election, should be cleared out because, in the first instance, it will be completely unconstitutional and a complete rubbishing of the will of the people if anyone wishes or create any attempt to rather cancel the elections or even to postpone it not to talk of cancelling it, it will be a complete disservice and something out of the way.
“We have been preparing for the elections for a long time and what we have been constantly asking our people is to prepare themselves to vote. First of all, we encouraged people to go and register at the time of registration; to go collect their voter’s cards when the cards were out. If there were problems in collecting, to raise objections, i.e raising their voices and now that the election is fast approaching, we can only say please do not truncate that vote forces.
“I believe the security agencies should take threats on non-indigenes very seriously and they should look for the sources of those kinds of threats and ensure that those people who are making such threats are taken away from circulation such that people can vote without any fear, without any measure of intimidation. In the first instance, I’m not sure that is even legal that anybody should go to the polling booth to snap, I am not sure we are allowed to take phones to the pooling booths not to talk of making videos or snapping in the polling booth. And, therefore, anyone asking people to do that is preaching irregularity concerning elections and they ought to be picked up by security agencies.
“Of course, why was a secret ballot put there in the first instance, it was there so that the people can cast their votes without such intimidation, and therefore, asking people to take snapshots is honestly a breach of privacy and the freedom of individuals to choose as they wish. As I said, It is always appropriate that security agencies should take note and do the right thing”
On the scarcity of new Naira notes, he said: “The Bishops of Nigeria had a meeting and part of what they said about the thing is that government should do everything possible to ensure that there is a wider circulation, there are more currencies put in circulation in order to eradicate the hardship because the hardships are beyond imagination, people will have money and they will be happy to buy their own money and this is a result of people who make policies and don’t think well before making policies, but rather rush things and not ready to make appropriate adjustments in order to ensure that the policies are able to fulfil the good purpose that they have had in mind.
“I believe the Governor of the Central Bank ought to have taken steps to ensure that this won’t cause problems, but we have seen that even the president has overruled the Supreme Court but not in such a way as to even make life easier for people. I think that certainly, the government needs to grow in order that our president can convince people that he tends to actually give this country a legacy of a free and fair election, they should deal with these matters that are threatening the elections, and ensure that the election will be fair.
On the confirmation of faithfuls, he said: “They are being confirmed, we pray that God will give them the grace to do great things for him in his church. They have the responsibility to stand up for Christ, to witness their faith, and to witness it in such a way that anybody who has an encounter with them will recognise that they are new beings because they have received the holy spirit in a special way. Some of them do drift from the Catholic faith, but those who drift are obviously people who don’t have enough understanding of the faith that they have, they are simply people who do not recognize the pressure that is there in the Catholic church, and perhaps is a call to improve of all their catechism and get people to become knowledgeable by the faith that they share such that they will not leave the light as they do and begin to pursue changes of the light instead of staying in the light themselves.”
