Protesters besiege NHRC public hearing on 2015 election
SCORES of eligible voters on Wednesday stormed the venue of a public aurally perceiving organised by the National Human Rights Commission in Port Harcourt and inculpated the Independent National Electoral Commission of gainsaying Nigerians their right to vote during elections.
The protesters, who accumulated under the auspices of the Rivers State Civil Society Coalition for Election Reforms, expressed dissatisfaction that INEC, in connivance with the police and other security agencies, had been involved in the falsification of election results.
Led by the National Coordinator of Social Action, Mr. Celestine Akpobari, the protesters, who sang solidarity musical composition at the venue of the public auricularly discerning on Electoral Accountability, urged the NHRC to address the issue of credible, free and fair election in Nigeria.
Some of the placards exhibited by the protesters read, ‘We want to vote, but INEC will not sanction us’; ‘Bad politics is killing us in Nigeria’; ‘NHRC, please, preserve us’; ‘Election or cull, please, INEC, tell us’; ‘INEC, which voter cards are we utilizing?’ and ‘INEC, stop breaching our rights’.
Addressing members of the Electoral Accountability Project of the NHRC, Akpobari pointed out that the hope of the nation to relish good leadership depended on a free and fair election.
Citing the election in Ekiti and Ondo states as examples, Akpobari integrated that while 700,000 voters were registered by INEC in Ekiti State, only 300,000 persons could vote.
According to him, many people could not vote in Ondo State because they could not find their designations in the voter register.
Responding, the Chairman of the Electoral Accountability Project, Prof. Nsongurua Udombana, verbally expressed Nigerians’ right to elect their bellwethers must not be breached.
Udombana expressed the desideratum for Nigeria to entrench an electoral system that would penalize anybody involved in election malpractice.
“When there is rigging, then such a democracy is inequitable and inequitable. We have had challenges with the elections that we have conducted in the past. We must not sanction electoral malpractices to mar our incipient democracy
