‘INEC is manipulating elections for APC,’ Governor says
Fayose made the allegation via a statement released by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka.
Ekiti state Governor, Ayodele Fayose.
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![President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje. [Twitter/@AsiwajuTinubu]](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg'%20width%3D'100'%20height%3D'100'%20data-ring-placeholder%3D'1'%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E "President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje. [Twitter/@AsiwajuTinubu]")
Fayose made the allegation via a statement released by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka on Wednesday, December 21.
The statement reads:
“Violence returned to our electoral process because of INEC partisanship and manipulation of the electoral process in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).”
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“Rather than lamenting, the INEC chairman should return the electoral commission to what he met by detaching it from the APC, which INEC has obviously merged with.
“If INEC is neutral as it used to be before APC took power, there won’t be electoral violence. There were elections in Nigeria between 2011 and 2015, and those elections were credible, such that Nigerians were sure that popular candidates and parties would emerge victorious because votes were allowed to count.
“Then, violence was no longer part of our electoral process. But sadly, this present INEC has destroyed all those gains and returned Nigeria to the era of ballot box snatching.
“By returning to the old system of accreditation and voting at the same time, and destroying the credibility of our electoral process, such that unpopular candidates are now having edge over and above those acceptable to the people, INEC by itself caused the electoral violence witnessed in the last 12 months.
“Even judges that will sit on election matters are now pre-arranged and picked even before the election, such that after using INEC and security agencies to pervert the will of the people, tribunals are used to authenticate the electoral fraud. The reality therefore is that only INEC can put an end to electoral violence and the only way to do it is for the commission to be neutral.”
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Fayose had earlier accused INEC of destroying Nigeria’s democracy.
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![Polling clerks counted votes at a polling station after completing the voting process of the general election in Abuja, Nigeria, on February 25, 2023. [Getty Images]](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg'%20width%3D'300'%20height%3D'172'%20data-ring-placeholder%3D'1'%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E "Polling clerks counted votes at a polling station after completing the voting process of the general election in Abuja, Nigeria, on February 25, 2023. [Getty Images]")