Lagos cleric, Prophet Lai Bamidele, has berated the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for not cancelling the February 23 presidential election, owing to what he describes as abuse of process, in allowing under-aged persons to vote in some northern parts of the country.
Bamidele, who is the General Overseer of Glorious End-Time Evangelical Ministries, a church with headquarters in Fagba, Lagos, said the outcome of the election had set a bad precedent in the electoral history of the country, and that it was a setback for Nigeria’s democracy.
“The whole election was a big sham. We, the southerners, are only fooling ourselves, especially the Yoruba race. If you know what happened in the far north, in places where one person could thump-print over 1,000 ballot papers, where six, seven, eight years old boys voting with PVCs showing that they are 18, you will agree with me that we are fooling ourselves here.
“Is that an election? These things took place in the home-state of a President who claimed to have integrity. Where is the integrity? Besides, INEC and the security agencies had been largely compromised, as they looked on while all these atrocities took place.
“We have documentary evidence of places where these atrocities were perpetrated and these things were seen by international observers. I had expected INEC to cancel the election if they were truly independent; but no, they played along, destroying their own integrity,” Bamidele lamented
On the election petition filed by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who was Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Bamidele expressed doubts if the ex-VP would get justice.
“Buhari has destroyed the judiciary already; the judges are all afraid, there is no more truth. They have messed up every segment of the whole country. But God is more than an individual.
“We have grappled with a government that is worse than this, but at the appointed time, God knows what to do,” he quipped.
The cleric also accused the President of turning nepotism to a state art in all the sensitive appointments made in his four years’ rule, noting, “Look at all the key appointments, the service chiefs, the police IG, Customs head, immigration head, DSS head, all of them are northerners.”
