The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), an umbrella body of over 40 opposition political parties has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to assent to the Electoral Act amendment Bill as an invitation to electoral anarchy.
The opposition political parties who were reacting to the President’s refusal to assent to the bill for the fourth time, said the president is afraid that he will lose the 2019 Presidential election if conducted free and fair.
“We are informed that the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate) Sen. Ita Enang could not even summon courage to face journalists and disclose the reasons why a jittery President afraid of a devastating electoral defeat yet desperate to cling on to power declined assent to the Bill,” CUPP said in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere.
“A President who knows fully well that he did not perform should not be surprised and jittery that all security reports he is receiving on the elections from the security agencies indicate that he will suffer unprecedented electoral defeat in the hands of the consensus opposition candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as Nigerians have rejected his failures and rudderless government.”
The statement said, “President Buhari has expectedly failed again to take advantage of the rare opportunity of the Electoral Amendment to write his name in gold as the President that signed the laws that guaranteed electoral credibility in Nigeria. But yet again, as usual of him, he failed to rise to the occasion.”
CUPP further said that it is an act of clear desperation that the President had shown. According to the group, “For each of the four times the Electoral Amendment Bill was presented to him for assent, he waited until the last day of his constitutionally allowed 30 days. “Nigerians should also be reminded that throughout the amendment process, President Buhari never made any suggestions or proposals to the National Assembly for the improvement of our electoral process but kept delaying and indulging in unnecessary hide and seek until this last minute.
“Rather, the President is willing to allow Nigeria witness her most violent elections when he had opportunity to sign the law which guarantees the freest and most credible elections in Nigeria’s history.
“The entire plan of the APC as we had revealed in earlier communications to the media is how to steal the mandate of the people to perpetuate a failed government in power.
“However to checkmate a failed regime from this plot to steal the mandate of the Nigerian people in the February 2019 Presidential elections, the opposition will in the coming days unveil the neutralization strategy the Opposition Code 20. This Code is as enshrined in Section 20 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act which allows citizens to perform policing duties of arrest. The Section provides that “a private person may arrest a suspect in Nigeria who in his presence commits an offence or whom he reasonably suspects of having committed an offence for which the Police is entitled to arrest without a warrant.”
CUPP also called the INEC Chairman to stand firm and be counted among the Patriots and heroes of Nigeria by resisting all attempts to rig the 2019 general elections through the reintroduction of the incident forms and pre-loading the Card reader machines with the details already generated through the controversial cash-for-vote/Tradermoni policy supervised by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
“The INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu must insist on implementing all the innovations already successfully test run in the Ekiti and Osun elections which were only devalued by the involvement and interference of the Police and other security agencies in the electoral process.
“INEC is the only institution of State yet to collapse and campaign and fully declare allegiance to the ruling Party. The Police and indeed all other security agencies are now fully working for the reelection of President Buhari in exchange for monetary benefits of the heads of these agencies.
“We therefore call on all PVC bearing Nigerians to vote out all APC candidates at all levels where their members in the National Assembly fail to join other patriotic Federal lawmakers to override the veto of the President in the coming days.