THE ANAMBRA STATE GUBERNATORIAL POLL
The security agencies and INEC should ensure a free and credible election
Although there are several political parties on the ballot, tomorrow’s gubernatorial election in Anambra State is essentially a contest between Prof Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Dr Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Senator Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Amid needless muckraking, these candidates presented their cases before Anambra people at the ARISE Television debate on Monday. But the real issue about the election is that it is being held in an environment heaving with dangerous weapons and swollen further by criminal networks that have threatened the people not to come out to vote. We therefore urge the security agencies to do everything to protect Nigerians who may choose to exercise their franchise at the poll tomorrow.
On Wednesday in Awka, the state capital, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu, held a stakeholder meeting with the political parties, religious leaders, traditional rulers, and civil society groups. The commission, Yakubu pledged, will deploy the Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device which replaces the Smart Card Reader (SCR) used in previous elections since 2015. “The BVAS has the dual capacity for fingerprint and facial authentication of voters. This is to guard against voting by identity theft, where one person uses another person’s Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) to vote using the incident form,” said Yakubu. “With this development, the use of the incident form is abolished. No voter without genuine PVC will vote. No voter, who has not been successfully accredited electronically, using the BVAS, will vote.”
The election is coming at a very testy period. For several weeks, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has imposed a weekly ‘sit at home’ protest in all the states in the zone. By the order, businesses, and normal work as well as social activities in the zone are to come to a halt every Monday. To date, this order has been obeyed largely out of fear of the violent enforcers acting on behalf of IPOB. Banks have been closed to the public just as markets and shops have been shuttered. School sessions, including during examination, have been crudely disrupted. Inter-state transportation has similarly been affected while several critical institutions have considered it wise to observe one day of compulsory holiday every week.
To ensure compliance with their illegal order, IPOB has seen it fit to use thugs to infringe on the freedom and safety of innocent citizens who insist on exercising their basic freedoms of movement and enterprise on the days of the ‘sit at home’ protests. Reports of murder and robbery of innocent citizens in various locations under the sit at home regime have further complicated the internal security challenge in the zone. Yet, there is scant evidence that this strategy has altered the plight of their detained leader, Nnamdi Kanu. Nor is there any evidence that it has brought IPOB and its sympathisers any closer to the attainment of their larger political objective of a ‘Biafra’ nation. But there are genuine fears about the Anambra State gubernatorial poll.
With INEC and the security agencies expressing their preparedness for tomorrow, we hope for an election that will be free, fair, and devoid of violence. To ensure a smooth conduct of the election, there has been several well-meaning interventions by critical stakeholders. We hope that common sense will prevail so that the people can be allowed to exercise their franchise in an atmosphere of peace. At the end, the choice of who governs Anambra for the next four years is that of the residents of the state to make. That is what is before them tomorrow. May the best candidate win.
