Hours after it said it will conduct Saturday’s election in Edo State, the electoral body has reversed itself and has postponed the election indefinitely thus pandering to the earlier warning of insecurity issued by the Police and DSS. INEC did not give a new date.
INEC has behaved in the most irresponsible manner in recent months and the somersault in the EDO election is not a surprise, an enraged Mr. David Osagie, a Benin-based businessman said in frustration.
Earlier Thursday INEC had said that after carefully weighing the consequences and parameters of postponing the Edo governorship election as advised yesterday (Wednesday) by spokespersons of the Police and Directorate of State Security (DSS), the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has decided to go ahead with the conduct of the election as scheduled for Saturday, 10th September 2016, INEC said in a statement Thursday.
Addressing press men at the Edo State Office of the Commission Thursday afternoon, the National Commissioner in charge of Voter Education and Publicity of INEC, Prince Solomon Adedeji Soyebi, who expressed the determination of the Commission to go ahead with the election disclosed that as at Wednesday, the commission had reached not less than ninety-seven percent level of preparation for the conduct of the election.
Except the actual conduct of the election, he explained that the Commission had scrupulously implemented all the items listed in the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the Edo governorship election which it issued in March this year.
Prince Soyebi stressed that the Commission would not be teleguided and that it would not do anything that would mortgage Nigeria’s democracy.
He further emphasized that the Commission robustly considered the implication of demobilising and arrived at the fact that it was more expensive to do so.
