The Southeast Based Coalition of Human Rights & Democracy Organizations (SBCHROs), a coalition of 22 human rights and democracy organizations, on Wednesday raised serious fears about the country’s presidential election scheduled for this Saturday, February 16, 2019. Read below their fears as contained in a part of a detailed statement issued in Onitsha, Anambra State:

From every indication especially going by investigations conducted across the country by our Coalition, the 2019 Presidential Election taking place in three days’ time is likely to be thousands of miles away from being forensically, circumstantially and ethno-religiously credible, participatory, free and widely acceptable. The Poll is already marred by several manipulative pre-determinants and chiefly affected by “Jega PVC virus” or “scientific rigging through PVCs”.

It is recalled that the Nigerian population particularly the Southern and Northern Christian voting and eligible populations were infested with “Jega PVC virus” way back in 2014 and 2015 during the “continuous and general voters’ registration and revalidation exercises”. The “Jega PVC virus” not only led to gross lopsidedness in the registration of voters and distribution of PVCs between the North and the South, but also saw almost all Northern Muslims including the physically and visually challenged captured as voters and issued with PVCs till date as against millions of Southerners particularly citizens of Southeast and South-south Regions and Northern Christians deliberately shut out, frustrated and denied registration and issuance of PVCs till date.

High incidences of non-issuance of PVCs to those that struggled to be registered in Southern Nigeria and members of the Northern Christian and other non-Muslim population were widely reported; likewise sinisterly motivated burning or destruction of PVCs belonging to non-Muslims across the country. During the said exercises, members of the Northern Muslim population were so captured as registered voters with most of them issued with PVCs that millions of minors and hundreds of thousands, not millions of aliens possibly from Chad, Niger and others from neighboring African countries were captured, registered and issued with PVCs as “registered voters in Nigeria”; whereas in the South and Christian settlements in the North, revise was the case and has remained so till date.

Till date, too, INEC has continued to recognize and retain those millions of minors; most of whom were as young as eight to twelve years in 2015 as “registered voters in Nigeria”. Today, they are among the voting population expected to vote in the 2019 Presidential Poll; likewise hundreds of thousands, if not millions of widely suspected aliens registered or captured as “voters in Nigeria”. The widely suspected teeming registered alien populations are strongly believed to be among the present Northwest and Northeast registered voting population, allowed into the country on account of their Islamic and language identities.

Suspicion is still rife and strong that more of them were recently given PVCs and prepared to be allowed to vote in this Saturday’s presidential poll. The tragedy of it all was that in the 2015 President Poll in the Northern Muslim States of Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, etc where both the blind, the deaf and dumb and the old voted, by INEC account, “there was no single invalid vote cast”.

INEC under Jega had in 2014 and 2015 unofficially introduced and maintained discriminatory and imbalance voters’ registration methods between the North and the South or between Muslims and Christians. In the said imbalance voters’ registration and revalidation policies, registrants in the North (Muslims) were widely allowed to be registered and issued PVCs through proxies (.i.e. family, clan and district heads or imams and emirs) while those in the South and Northern Christian populations were strictly asked to be bodily present at registration centers for registration and collection of PVCs.

In the course of adhering strictly to such hash and imbalance conditions, those who turned out were made to pass through other rigorous conditions including deliberate shortage in registration materials and their personnel and imposition of sundry biometric requirements, extortion, etc. On account of such deliberately imposed hash conditions, many prospective registrants stayed away or left the registration centers in anger, frustration and disappointment. Many who wanted to do “voters’ cards transfer” or reclaim their lost PVCs or collect their PVCs or get freshly registered all got frustrated by such deliberate hash policies or conditions as well as other corruptive and unfriendly activities of the INEC field staff deployed.

Today, none of such hash policies and conducts has changed. As a matter of fact they have gone from bad to worse. Totality of these explains why the Northwest Region presently has almost two times double the number of PVCs than the Southeast Region; with over 19m as against 10m for Southeast. Cases of multiple registrations are also widely suspected to be very high in the North especially among Northern Muslim populations. Shockingly, there are more PVCs in the insurgency ravaged Northeast Region than in the non-war Southeast or South-south Region.

In the just concluded PVC collection exercise across Nigeria, the mappings used in 2014 to 2015 to identify Northern Christian settlements and areas of Southwest and Northern Nigeria dominated or inhabited by Judeo-Christian Igbo Citizens have been retained by INEC. Similar ethno-religiously marked mappings have also been used by Boko Haram and Fulani jihadistgenocidists to identify and launch their various violent attacks on Christian settlements and communities in Northern Nigeria. Apart from difficulties in locating and retrieving their PVCs, there were reported incidences of ethnically and religiously marked PVCs and TVCs lumped or gathered in large numbers and burnt or destroyed. This is in addition to three fire incidents in twelve days, in Isialangwa, Abia State, Pan LGA in Plateau State and Awka, Anambra State.

By the recent account of Mr. Mark Jacob, an international speaker against the persecution of Christians and former Attorney Gen of Kaduna State, “Christian settlements have scanty polling units in the North”. He further noted as follows: “You can imagine that even the simple issue of constituency delineation is in favour of the Muslims. Voting centers in the Christian dominated settlements in the North are scanty. The Christian communities have very little voting strength; people will have to trek several kilometers before they can cast their votes. This is not the same in other areas occupied mainly by the Muslims in my state, for instance, the section of Kaduna State, occupied by Christians, have lesser polling units and this has caused a lot of disenfranchisement”. More details of his recent interview are here:https://punchng.com/christian-settlements-have-scanty-polling-units-in-the-north-jacob-kaduna-ex-ag/?fbclid=IwAR3huezOgtwJ6jEyGsQVJZWUgMwpbbd3RUxzZlKjf6wibO8nJSp0oatWHmw

Other Fears Over The 2019 Presidential Poll

·The present composition and peopling of INEC and its recent broad day electoral robbery in Osun and Ekiti States are clear attestation of its gross incompetence and lack of independence, neutrality and impartiality.

·The central Government of Nigeria has circumstantially not hidden its determination to rig the 2019 Polls particularly the Presidential Poll. The unguarded utterances of the National Chairman of the central ruling party and Gov Nasiru el-Rufai of Kaduna State and brazen display of bias and manipulative body languages by the country’s security chiefs are further attestation or indication.

·Various rigging or electoral manipulative options also circumstantially abound. They include coded and un-coded methods of vote buying such as tradimoney policy of the Federal Government, operationally supervised by the Vice President.

·There have been several reports across the country of procurement of PVCs or copying and taking away of PVC code numbers by agents of the central ruling party. From Anambra governorship poll experience of November 2017, these purchased PVCs or their code numbers which may most likely be in their millions are likely to be systematized and uploaded on Election Day in the INEC central data or data strong rooms as validly cast votes.

·This can be perfected by hired thumb printing of commensurate number of ballot papers. In Anambra State, it was found that over 8,540 accredited voters did not vote; meaning that those hired to thumb print ran out of time; leaving behind the 8,540 accredited voters who never voted despite the fact that “simultaneous accreditation and voting method” was used.

· Intersociety had specifically written INEC and urged same to introduce electronic voting to exist side by side with manual voting in Nigeria, all to no avail. The letter was written on 2^nd December 2017 barely one month after the Anambra Governorship Poll of 18^th November 2017.

·In furtherance of vote buying and voter intimidation plans circumstantially linked to the central ruling Party, several political contractors and owners of oil wells as well as some serving non central ruling party’s governors have been hired including in Anambra State, mobilized and equipped to provide cash and “deliver” their States or areas at all costs using assigned and deployed election day security agents

·It is widely feared that INEC will apply soft methods of voting in the North especially among Muslim voters and apply hash methods in the South particularly Southeast and South-south and among Northern Christian settlements and communities.

·Such discriminatory methods will involve possible discarding of use of card readers and widespread manual and multiple voting in the named Northern Muslim areas and strict application of use of card readers in the named Christian areas of Southeast, South-south and Northern Christian areas and Igbo dominated areas in the Southwest

·Inconsistencies have also characterized INEC’s 2019 elections’ handling styles including strange and revised mode of thumb printing; thereby making the Commission serially probating and reprobating.

·Threats of group violence by northern Muslim youths are likely going to be high and wide spread in Northern Nigeria especially; to be deliberately designed to create or inflict fears among opposite voting population and deployed INEC staff including serving members of the NYSC so as to cower them to do their bidding and have their own field day during the poll. Collusion by deployed security agents with the named violent or potentially violent Northern youths is expected to be high and widespread owing to domination of the country’s security forces by members of the same Muslim religious fate.

·Insurgency inflicted fears and terrors are likely to be cashed in and manipulated by desperate agents of the central ruling party in the Northeast.

·Presidential Voting in Northern Nigeria especially among Muslims are expected to be characterized and contaminated by multiple voters and millions of registered aliens and minors with deployed INEC staff being helpless and security agents looking the other way but operate with red eyes in Southern Nigeria especially Southeast, South-south, Northern Christian settlements and other Northern and Southwest areas dominated by citizens of Southeast and South-south Nigeria

·Security agents and their establishments owing to their gross lopsided composition (.i.e. dominated by Northern Muslims) across the country are expected to be manifestly bias and pro Muslim voters especially those favoring or casting their votes to the central ruling Party.

Threats Against Foreign Observers & Western Democracies As Evidence Of Rigging Plans

·Threats, name calling and campaigns of calumny fiercely launched by the Federal Government including the central ruling party’s National Chairman and Gov Nasiru el-Rufai of Kaduna State are clear evidence of desperation and rigging plans of the present cabalistic Federal Government. The central Government of Nigeria needs not panic or become jittery of the western democracies and foreign observers if it is poised at conducting transparent and free and credible polls. In one of the unguarded utterances of the Federal Government, it was reported thus “if it means rigging the presidential poll, why not after all Obasanjo and his PDP rigged for sixteen years”. This is a height of executive recklessness and brigandage.

·Western democracies and international observers are hereby called upon not to shy away or be cowed by the Federal Government’s threats and campaigns of calumny. Their attention is also drawn to the fears expressed above so as to pressure the central Government and its “dependent” INEC to scuttle them or take serious diplomatic actions against their vicarious and direct perpetrators.

·As a matter of fact, the western democracies and international observers must stand their ground and specifically focus their attention in Northern Nigeria. The US should specifically monitor the Presidential Poll via its satellite and other legitimate channels. Election observers, especially international observers and members of the general population in Nigeria must make good use of camera phones and other hidden cameras or sophisticated electronic gadgets so as to forensically cover the polls and those deployed to handle them.

·On Election Day, Nigerians from all walks of life particularly those that have attained 18yrs and above and issued with Permanent Voters Cards are called upon to come out en masse and locate their nearby polling booths and cast their votes to candidates of their conscientious choices.

·Those without PVCs except those in essential duties such as Red Cross officials, medical staff and paramilitaries have no business loitering about in the streets or along the roads. They should stay off voting areas or streets or roads until voting is over. It is a breach of Nigeria and international human rights and democracy laws to force or intimidate or stop fellow citizens from voting. If caught, the Coalition will have no sympathy for the caught or such law breakers and will insist the law must take its full course provided it is in commensuration with the offense caught committed.

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