Northern Elders Want Elections to Hold Same Day

Prof. Ango Abdullahi

The  Northern Elders’ Forum  (NEF) has advocated that all   elections in 2015 should hold simultaneously across the country on the same day.

It also faulted the proposed national conference and threatened to boycott it as it will amount to a sheer waste of time and public funds.

Spokesman of the forum, Professor Ango Abdullahi, told reporters in Bauchi  weekend that conducting all elections on the same day could help in avoiding electoral malpractices and to save cost.

Abdullahi who stressed that the forthcoming polls must be free and fair in order to avert violence, faulted the election timetable released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which it said could give room for manipulation.

Abdullahi, who restated NEF’s stand that the North would strive to ensure that power returns to the region in 2015, opposed the national conference being planned by President Goodluck Jonathan, saying it was designed to protect the president’s personal interest.

He said even if there must be a national conference, it should be  sovereign and the executive and legislative arms of government would be dissolved leaving only the judiciary.
This, he added, should be the situation pending when all burning issues, including the desirability or otherwise of the nation remaining one,  would have been decided by delegates to the national conference.

‘’The national conference proposed by Jonathan is a waste of public funds and is ill-timed because elections are now approaching. Even the mode of operation and composition of the delegates of the conference are all wrong.

“We heard that when the delegates are nominated by their states, it is Jonathan who is going to approve. So, you can see that this is not a Nigerian conference but Jonathan’s conference,’’ he said.
According to him, the North will boycott the conference and will continue to enlighten Nigerians on the need for power rotation as it is the only thing that can stabilise the polity.

Source: Thisday