With 42 Indepresident National Electoral Commission (INEC) offices razed in the last two years, President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday issued a stern warning to those bent on destroying the country through promoting insurrection, and burning down critical national assets: a rude shock awaits them, and very soon too.
The President spoke after he received briefing from Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu, on series of attacks on facilities of the electoral body round the country.
\u201cI receive daily security reports on the attacks, and it is very clear that those behind them want this administration to fail,\u201d President Buhari said. \u201cInsecurity in Nigeria is now mentioned all over the world. All the people who want power, whoever they are, you wonder what they really want. Whoever wants the destruction of the system will soon have the shock of their lives. We\u2019ve given them enough time.\u201d
A newly completed office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) located at Okwudor community in Njaba Local Government Area of Imo, ablaze, last Sunday.
INEC Commissioner, Festus Okoye said,
\u201cAlthough no life was lost, the building was substantially burnt down, along with electoral materials, office equipment, and furniture.\u201d
He disclosed then that the total number of INEC offices attacked nationwide since 2019 had risen to 42.
\u201cINEC buildings, infrastructure, and equipment are critical national assets that guarantee the continuity of electoral activities throughout the federation,\u201d he said.
He feared that the attacking election infrastructure was capable of compromising electoral activities and the credibility of the democratic process.
A week earlier, the INEC office in Ahiazu Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State, bringing it to the 8th INEC office to be attacked in Imo State since the 2019 General Election.
President Buhari recalled that he visited all the 36 states of the country before the 2019 election, \u201cand majority of the people believed me, and the election proved it.\u201d He promised to continue leading the country in accordance with Constitutional provisions.
He said those misbehaving in certain parts of the country were obviously too young to know the travails and loss of lives that attended the Nigerian Civil War.
\u201cThose of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand. We are going to be very hard sooner than later.\u201d
The President said the Service Chiefs and the Inspector General of Police have been changed, \u201cand we will demand security from them.\u201d
On the dangers posed to future elections by the burning of INEC facilities, President Buhari said he would give the electoral commission all it needed to operate, \u201cso that no one would say we don\u2019t want to go, or that we want a third term. There will be no excuse for failure. We\u2019ll meet all INEC\u2019s demands.\u201d
In his briefing, Prof Yakubu said that so far, there have been 42 cases of attacks on INEC offices nationwide, since the last General Election.
\u201cThe 42 incidents so far occurred in 14 states of the Federation for a variety of reasons\u2026.Most of the attacks happened in the last seven months, and they are unrelated to protest against previous elections. From the pattern and frequency of the most recent attacks, they appear to be targeted at future elections. The intention is to incapacitate the Commission, undermine the nation\u2019s democracy and precipitate a national crisis,\u201d Prof Yakubu said.
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With 42 Indepresident National Electoral Commission (INEC) offices razed in the last two years, President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday issued a stern warning to those bent on destroying the country through promoting insurrection, and burning down critical national assets: a rude shock awaits them, and very soon too. The President spoke after he received briefing from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2930,31,154],"class_list":["post-33786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-2930","tag-buhari","tag-inec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}