Aformer speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, Stanley Ohajuruka, has called for the scrapping of State Independent Electoral Commissions across the country, saying that they had outlived their purposes and usefulness.
Ohajuruka made the call in a chat with The Point, following the criticisms that trailed the recent conduct of local government election in the state.
Opposition parties had made allegations of fraud against the ruling party during the recent council poll.
we need to have a central body that organises all strata of elections in the country.
He said that the ruling parties in states across the country had hijacked the SIECs and had been using them to install their candidates in the councils against the wishes of the people, under the guise of conducting elections.
The former speaker, who also doubles as the state Coordinator of the Buhari Support Organisation, argued that all that transpired during the recent local government polls in the states was mere selection and not elections, adding that most members of the opposition parties boycotted it because they knew that the process had no credibility.
Ohajuruka, therefore, advocated the take-over of the SIECs by the Independent National Electoral Commission, arguing that INEC was adequately equipped, staffed, and positioned to conduct such elections.
“If we want the electoral system to be credible, I think we need to have a central body that organises all strata of elections in the country. That is my own proposal,” he said. The Abia State Independent Electoral Commission had announced that the Peoples Democratic Party won all the chairmanship and councillorship seats in the 17 local government areas of the state.
The former speaker of the state assembly, however, argued that what happened during the period was that the government seized the process to install PDP candidates in the councils.
Ohajuruka, who was also a member of the House of Representatives for Ikwuano/ Umuahia federal constituency from 2007 to 2011, said that his party, the All Progressives Congress, was studying the situation to determine its next line of action.
Similarly, the state Secretary of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Mr. Sunday Onukwubiri, condemned both the conduct and the results of the election, saying they were unacceptable to the party.
Onukwubiri accused ABSIEC of alleged connivance with the PDP to hijack the election, adding that the APGA would not condone, “the fraud, daylight robbery and injustice.”
