Muhammad Sabiu, Kaduna
The leadership of the National Youths Alliance (NYA) has called on the youths to come out en masse and vote for candidates of their choice during the gubernatorial and state assembly elections slated for 18th March.
In an interactive session with newsmen on Tuesday, the spokesman for the group, Comrade Obande Gideon while appraising INEC’s conduct of the February 25 election, alleged that President Muhammad Buhari gave the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) all the necessary financial support to conduct credible elections but at the end of the day, Nigerians were disappointed.
Comrade Gideon noted that the INEC derailed the process by deliberately refusing to allow the transmission of the results electronically and on good time which raised eyebrows about the credibility of the election.
The group also called on the electoral body to tell Nigerians how it spent the billions of naira given to them to conduct the election by the President.
“Prof Mahmud Yakubu is the biggest obstacle to Nigeria’s electoral voyage to free and fair elections. He promised Nigerians a credible election but reneged on the promises.
“We are calling on Prof Mahmud Yakubu and his resident electoral commissioners to explain how they spent the N400bn given to them to conduct the 2023 general election.
“In the same vein, we are calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions (EFCC), Independent Crimes and Related Commissions and other anti-graft bodies to call Prof Mahmud and commissioners to explain how INEC servers were about to be hacked, hence the refusal to upload the results of the Presidential elections.
“We are also calling on the anti-graft agencies to investigate how Prof Yakubu spent the N400 billion allocated to the electoral commission,”
Apart from rejecting the result of the February 25th Election, the group said it will approach the courts with the aim of making sure that all the irregularities carried out by INEC are corrected.
To this end, they called on the youths to come out en masse to vote for candidates of their choice during the gubernatorial and legislative election, adding that, if they do not come out, phantom figures will be allocated to political parties it favours.
“We are calling on the youth to come out massively next Saturday and vote for parties of their choice. Youth should also make sure that after voting, to snap results collated, they declared.