APC Speaks As If It Has Captured The Judiciary, INEC – HURIWA Says
A pro-democracy advocate group on the aegis of Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has said that following the ways, manners and boastful tendencies of the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), it appeared as if the ruling party has pocketed or swallowed the Judiciary and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The Rights group particularly cautioned that the boastful tendencies of the APC portrayed Nigeria as a nation whose judiciary has been captured as it boasts about winning elections that are long in coming.
It said that such boasts clearly demonstrated the strategy of state capture that the ruling APC may have worked out which emboldens the hierarchy of the party to make such hasty, boastful, illegal but dreadful boasts to win all elections.
HURIWA which stated these in a statement on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, stressed that the development posed serious dangers to the survival of constitutional democracy, adding that the APC leaders have been boasting that the party will win all future elections just as it boasted before the Edo state governorship poll and achieved it.
HURIWA therefore challenged the nation’s judiciary and INEC to defend those constitutionally created, protected and guaranteed institutions from being overwhelmed by the APC by enforcing their mandates in accordance with the provisions of the constitution which created each of the two strategic pro-democratic institutions as independent of the executive branch of government or the political party of the president of Nigeria.
The statement signed by Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator of HURIWA, warned that the immediate risk inherent in the boastful posture of the APC is that if the party continues to manipulate the electoral process using her domination of the central government to corner election victories illicitly, voters’ apathy will become more pronounced leading to either a one-party state which is totalitarian state or democracy may cave in and collapse to give way to anarchy.
HURIWA therefore called on Nigerians to speak out and mount pressure on INEC and the judiciary not to be subservient to the political party that controls the central government.
It also reinforced its advocacy for both INEC and the Nigerian judiciary to guard jealousy her constitutional independence and autonomy and not to allow the APC or any political party to create the impression that it has pocketed and swallowed them.
It further said; “The functions of INEC as contained in Section 15, Part 1 of the Third Schedule of the 1999 Constitution (As Amended) and Section 2 of the Electoral Act 2010 (As Amended) include the following: Organise, undertake and supervise all elections to the offices of the President and Vice-President, the Governor and Deputy Governor of a State, and to the membership of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the House of Assembly of each state of the federation;
Register political parties in accordance with the provisions of the constitution and Act of the National Assembly; among others.
Similarly, HURIWA noted that the Constitution in section 6(1) states that “the judicial powers of the federation shall be vested in the courts to which this section relates, being courts established for the federation”.
HURIWA noted with regrets that the national chairman of the APC, Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje, has continued to boast that the party will win all coming elections by saying that the ruling APC) will capture the Southwest geopolitical zone in the next round of elections.
HURIWA also said that Ganduje had boasted that the APC was set to take over the political structures of Rivers State, saying that the oil-rich state belongs to the governing party.
HURIWA threfore warned the APC not to deliberately design and impose illegal mechanisms for manipulation of elections, stressing that free, transparent, peaceful elections are the determinant factors that give life to sustainable democracy and sustainable development.