The will of the electorate must be respected
Tomorrow, Saturday March 28, the Presidential and National Assembly elections will hold across the length and breadth of the country, and the States’ gubernatorial assembly elections will follow on April 11, 2015. As it is, there is anxiety amongst Nigerians and the international community has equally express concerns about the outcome of the elections. This worry derives mainly from two fronts; the seeming hate campaigns that have heated up the polity, and the fact that post 2011 elections witnessed violence that claimed the lives of innocent Nigerians. That is something that the nation can least afford to repeat itself.
Perhaps, the American President, Barak Obama puts it succinctly when in a goodwill message to Nigerians on the elections, he urged the electorate to ensure free, fair, credible and violence- free elections. He also called on political leaders and the candidates to impress it on their supporters that violence has no place in democratic elections – and that they will not incite, support or engage in any kind of violence – before, during and after the elections. Economic Community of West-African States (ECOWAS) Chairman and President of Ghana, John Mahama, also spoke in like terms, promising to mobilize regional support for the elections. He also met with the two leading contestants, President Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, to drum home the point.
All of these came in the wake of a Federal High Court ruling that banned the deployment of military personnel for electoral duties. This Newspaper holds it sacrosanct that aspirations to public office should be purely to serve and therefore, there should be no room for violence and or election rigging. The will of the electorate must be respected. It is in this light that Nigerians hope that the political class will conduct themselves in line with democratic best practices. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must endeavour to conduct a free, fair and credible election. Indeed it is an opportunity for the INEC Chair, Prof. Attahiru Jega, to write his name in gold. On the other hand, the Nigerian Police – whose responsibility it is to protect lives and property – must strive not to be seen as partisan and ensure a violence- free elections.
