Nigerians are tired of deceitful LG polls -Group
…Hails release of kidnapped students
By Benjamin Arida://
Muslim Media Watch Group of Nigeria, MMWG has said that the low turn-out of voters during last Saturday’s local governments’ elections in Lagos and Ogun States, MMWG confirmed that people are tired of deceitful polls.
The group expressed surprise that despite several demands for justice, transparency and accountability in local government elections which made citizens to demand for scrapping of the States’ Independent Electoral Commissions, SIECs, “the nation has continued with undemocratic process where state governments choose whoever will contest, organise and supervise same elections and award all results in their own favour.”
MMWG, in a statement issued yesterday by its national coordinator, Ibrahim Abdullahi, declared that continuation of local government elections in the country is “fraudulent, unjust, unacceptable and unsustainable.”
It, therefore, called on the National Assembly to amend the relevant portion of the 1999 Constitution to give the Independent National Independent Electoral Commission, INEC the power to organise local government elections and scrap States Independent Electoral Commissions without further delay.
The group, in the same statement hailed the freedom of 28 Bethel Baptist High School students in Chikum Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
It condemned the ‘siege’ of criminals on Nigerians especially in the Northern states and called on the security agencies, especially the military, the Police and the Department of Security Services to upscale their efforts in curbing the violent crimes of kidnapping and banditry in the country.
“The nation’s intelligence and security mechanism ought to have located the dens of these criminals and be able to track them down since they started their nefarious activities several years back,” the group stated.
While commending the federal government’s efforts in arresting the wave of crimes across the country, it noted that “the failure of terrorists to release the kidnapped 137 children of an Islamiyyah School in Tegina, Niger State is a serious challenge to the federal Niger State Government”, adding that another “challenge is the recurring kidnapping in Kaduna, Niger, Zamfara, Kebbi and Katsina States.”
“The information that some of the children kidnapped from the Islamiyyah Schools in Tegina are kept somewhere near Shiroro also in Niger State is disturbing as security and state government officials are keeping mum over this issue inspite of the hardship on these children leading to the death of three of them already, MMWG lamented.
The group, therefore, called on all concerned in governments to urgently relieve agonising parents and guardians of the grieve by doing the needful to set the innocent children free while efforts should be made to capture alive those tormenting Nigeria with these crimes so that they could be made to face the law.
