By Ken Afor
The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, has said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should not be blamed for election violence, faulting politicians for the chaos during conduct of elections in the country.
Ganduje made this known on Wednesday in Abuja when he received the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) election and party monitoring team at the APC national secretariat.
Ganduje, a two-time Governor of Kano State praised INEC for its management of the electoral process, despite what he called obstacles placed on
its path by partisan individuals.
The former governor said; “There is no doubt today is a historic day, the day of reckoning, accomplishment, in terms of the relationship between INEC, and political parties, particularly the ruling party APC,
“There is no doubt, it is important for INEC, to undertake such visits so that they can obtain the viability of political parties for the sake of planning and records and also as part of their duties as provided by law.
“I want to assure you that our party is a strong party. We are ready to provide all the information required. We want to make our party a very strong institution as required for the development of democracy. Therefore, we have decided to make our party active throughout the year not only during elections.
“We have also directed that all our party offices ranging from wards, local governments, zones, and states, basically the officers must be available. And operationally, the office must be functioning.
“Also, we have decided to make our party ICT compliant. We have directed for e-registration of our members and we believe that will help us to partner with INEC. This will help us in planning, identify members, sex and age bracket in our party, qualification, professions of our party members, identities of our members right from ward level to the national level.
“We are developing what we call the National Institute for Progressive Studies in order to teach our members the basics of democracy so that the issue of hate speech will be eliminated.
“I know one of the biggest problems of INEC in conducting elections is insecurity. Everyone will say INEC, but it is the politicians.
“So, in order to understand the rules and regulations of elections, in order to understand what is required to be civilized politicians, our institutions will be educating our people from time to time so that they can abide by the rules”.
Ganduje’s statement may not be unconnected with a recent upheaval in Kano when residents took to the streets to protest the Court of Appeal ruling, sacking Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) over a pre-election matter.
The court had disqualified Mr Yusuf as a candidate in the election because he was not a member of the NNPP at the time of the election.
However, in a recent judgment by the Supreme Court, it affirmed the election of Governor Yusuf, whose victory at the March 2023 poll was earlier overturned by the two lower courts.
The apex court judgment was said to have brought relative peace to Kano State.
