The main opposition parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the United Progressives Party, UPP, at the weekend, took a swipe on the Independent National Electoral Commission,INEC, over the recent redeployment of Resident Electoral Commissioners,RECs, ahead next month’s general elections.
The Chairman,Enugu State chapter of APC,Mr. Ben Nwoye said,”it is bad for INEC to routinely, switch the RECs few weeks before the general elections. It shows that INEC trusted in the conduct of the elections.
He posited that these RECs must have built confidence with the political stakeholders in their various states.
The APC chieftain who described the recent exercise as a recipe for disaster, stated that the re-deployed RECs already appreciate the geographical terrain of their operations as well as gasrn3ered knowledge of their states.
He lamented that their redeployment has rathered their knowledge the state of operation useless as they are confronted with a new challenge of understand their new areas of operation.
“Enugu state do not have confidence that the new REC,Prof. Chukwuemeka Onukaogu will be able to conduct or supervise a free and fair election because of his antecedents in Anambra State. He supervised the conduct of the most unfair election in Anambra state which is subject of litigation. INEC Charman, Prof. Attahiru Jega admitted that the election he(Onukaogu) conduct ed in Anambra last year was floored.
Similarly, the National Chairman of UPP, Chief Chekwas Okorie said,”the redeployment has nothing to do with the acceptability of elections results, adding that INEC should go beyond individuals to building a strong institution that is tamper proof free from individual manipulations.
“The redeployment has not helped in the past and will not help now. It will only create an avenue for the RECs to make new friends in the new area where they are posted.”
