Kogi Forum Calls for Cancellation of Presidential, N’Assembly Elections

Ibrahim Oyewale in Lokoja

Barely two weeks after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential  candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as president-elect, a group , Kogi Women Forum(KWF)  comprising women  across the three senatorial districts of Kogi state, has called for the cancellation  of the February 25th presidential and National Assembly elections.

KWF  at  a press conference  in Lokoja  hinged their reasons for the call on the “chaos, brigandage, wide spread violence,  bloodletting  and even deaths that characterised the election.

Esther Opaluwa, who addressed newsmen on behalf of the women group stated that the February 25  election date, which was supposed to be the beginning of another democratic dispensation in our country in which everyone including our youth and women eagerly hoped to breath  air of freedom turned out to be the opposite.

“As you are all aware a significant date in the history of Nigeria just passed, a date that has become a watershed in the democratic story of Nigeria. Indeed 25th of February 2023 was a date all Nigerians home and abroad waited for with baited breath, for it was date that will mark the beginning of another democratic dispensation in our country and everyone including our youth and women eagerly participated in all the activities that led to that date,” she said.

According to her, “it was a day when the INEC chairman Prof Mahmoud Yakubu had assured Nigerians severally of their preparedness for this fateful day backed with the latest technology, funding and the necessary laws (Electoral Act 2022) to take our electoral processes to the next level. We even endured the sufferings the currency redesigned policy inflicted on us all in a bid to sanitise our electoral processes”.

“But the day,  25th of February 2023 ended in chaos, brigandage, wide spread violence,  bloodletting and even deaths.

“As we lament and mourn over what had happened during the day at almost all the polling stations, our traumatised sensibilities was further damaged with what we were seeing right there on the screens of our televisions which was quite the opposite of what the federal government and our President,  Mohammadu Buhari, the NASS, the security chiefs and even the umpire of the electoral processes had been assuring us will happen,” KWF said.

They therefore, demanded that “what happened on the 25th of February which the INECcalled election be cancelled, declared null and void and a rerun be organised as soon as possible.”

The women also  want all the perpetrators of violence around Kogi state, especially in the Central and Eastern axis ,who were arrested be brought to justice and be made to pay for the lives they wasted in the course of carrying out the orders of desperate politicians who wants to win at all cost and resorted to ballot box-snatching .

 “A searchlight be beamed on the activities of the agencies of the government of Kogi state with a view to bringing all those that used their official capacities to thwart the will of the people, especially the local government chairmen in the state with a view to bringing them to justice,” the group  added.

KWF also demanded that the families who were bereaved or injured in the course of carrying out their civic responsibility and right to vote to elect their preferred leaders but were disenfranchised, bruised battered and even killed be compensated.