* This election is battle between the talakawas and the rich – Wale Ogunyemi
*Why postponement is desirable – Concerned Citizens
*INEC working for PDP if…, Nigerian in Diaspora
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has decided to shift Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections till next week 23 February.
The governorship and house of assembly, FCT area council elections have also been shifted from 2 March to 9 March.
INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu confirmed NAN report of the shift of the presidential election, attributing the postponement of all the scheduled elections to logistic and operational problems.
He said the postponement will afford the commission the opportunity to address the identified challenges in order to maintain the quality of Nigeria’s elections.
The DEFENDER reports that the 2019 presidential election is a contest between the talakawas (the poor masses) and the rich that is the elite.
This was also corroborated by Chairman of Concerned Citizens Group, Mr. Wale Ogunyemi, in an Ogun meeting night of Friday 15 February.
At the meeting also attended by Mr. Adedoyin Fusika, Engr. Waheed Rufai and a top media executive among others, it was agreed that it would not be possible that Saturday 16 February Presidential and national assembly elections would be taken as credible should APC, a major party, be excluded from participation in Rivers and Zamfara states.
The group said that INEC would make the elections incredible if it went ahead to hold the polls without a major contending party like the ruling party “on account that a High Court working for some opposition interests particularly in Rivers State stopped APC and Supreme Court, with already exposed connivance of suspended Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen, affirming the high court ruling after an Appeal Court had set it aside.”
This action by the apex court, the group believed, would cause issues that might rubbish the outcome of the entire process if INEC did not use its own discretion and do the needful.
Commenting on the abrupt elections shift, we gathered that it will douse the unnecessary tensions that mounted by desperate politicians who were ready to die or compromise the sovereignty of their only country for fear of losing.
Also, although government and its security agencies were seen to be up to the task, the desperation of those politicians, has been noted.
This desperation is said to have exposed the hypocrisy of some supposed foreign nations thought to be friends of Nigeria as they openly displayed alliance with opposition Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar on condition that he promised to sell the Nigeria’s economic cash cow, the oil industry of NNPC to private hands.
The danger of selling NNPC to Nigeria’s National and citizens lives is better appraised in the sale of NEPA that last government of PDP did to private individuals of its own interest and who compromised the essence of the power sector playing opposition politics.
A Nigerian in the Diaspora America, Mr. Abass Adetunji, however took a swipe on INEC describing the shift as the electoral umpire working for opposition if the shift was because of legal issues in Rivers and Zamfara states.
“If the presidential and National Assembly polls are moved based on the legal challenges in Rivers and Zamfara, the INEC team has really fallen short of expectations. It is as if they are working for the PDP!
“I remember making a post that INEC needed to be flexible by obeying the Zamfara Court order and disregard the Abuja court’s , both are courts of coordinate jurisdictions, anyway and they would have violated no.law by so doing. They should have listed the candidates and waited for the Appeal Court judgment, that would have been easier,” he said.
