The Governorship Candidate for the All Progressive Congress, APC, Emmanuel Jime said that Nigerians have been made a laughingstock before the International community.
Jime stated this in his Makurdi residence while reacting to the postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly election by Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, billed to hold February 16.
He stated: “I woke up this morning with my PVC like every other Nigerian, ready to go. And to be honest, when I first saw the information being passed around in the social network, I was inclined not to believe it because often there’s a lot that goes on in the social media that may not be true. Until when I finally got the confirmation of this postponement on television.”
Describing the news as really very devastating, he said; “I have to say that for me, this is really a very disappointing outing. We have worked very hard to make sure that we are delivering on this democracy. We should be improving on how we are delivering on our elections.
“We have made ourselves a laughingstock as far as the international community is concerned. If we can’t deliver a simple thing like a circle of election. Assuming we had this election today, we still have another one in the next four years really we should work in such a way we do not have this bad scenarios.
“I’ve heard a couple of comments and people saying this happened in 2011 and again and 2015. I totally disagree on this attitude of people looking to the past to justify why we are failing.”
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He insisted that the past should actually be a lesson for us to learn from and improve on our democratic tradition.
“To me it is really really devastating. As a person, the whole beauty of the democratic tradition is no longer there. It seems to me that we are really crawling. We are not moving as fast as we should. So I can’t find the right words to describe how I feel.
“Imagine what we have gone through in this process. It has taken a lot of toll on political parties. On the electoral umpire itself, I watched very sad videos of how youth corps members were sleeping on the bare floor, some on the buses. We should not be seeing these kind of photos in the 21st century Nigeria.
He however stated that the postponement will not affect his election as governor saying his election was not dependent on the presidential election but on the issues that he has canvassed.
“I think that all politics are local and everybody know election is 2nd March and was working towards it. The fact of the matter is that the human and financial resources to be deployed to it again will be quite tasking.
“But for my chances , it won’t be affected. The issues have not changed. If you haven’t paid salaries for past four years, you won’t be able to do in one week.
“The only thing is that it will give us opportunity to cover the areas not covered so as terrible as this may look, I will convert it to an opportunity.
2I can understand the level of anger. Nigerians are angry. Nobody in his right senses will be happy about this. As a matter of fact, we are all losers. Democracy is suffering. If at the end of the day we are offering ourselves for service delivery, that should be the only consideration for election and political participation.”
Jime called on his supporters to calm down and exercise patience to appreciate the issues to enable the Nigerian public decipher whether the whole process is compromised or not.
Also reacting to the postponement, one of the conveners of Civil Society Organization, CSO in the state, Josephine Habba, told our correspondent in Makurdi that the CSO would not give up in their quest to educate the electorates on their civic responsibilities.
“You can see my dressing, I was already out in the field for the exercise when I realized the election has been postponed. I’m not only disappointed but ashamed of Nigeria I called my country. I do not understand why INEC will have three years to prepare for an election, then it will now tell us it was less prepared and need a week to complete preparations.
“I think the news about federal might which have come from different quarters is just a confirmation that indeed there are people who think they own Nigeria and that whatever they do, we will take it,” she said.
Habba reiterated that the civil societies will not give up on their calls that the right thing be done. She equally noted with displeasure that accreditation had already began in some areas of Konshisha local government in the state before the news was broken to them.
“We don’t care who you the electorates vote for but we must educate the people and insist that the people come out and vote next week,” Habba added.
