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The Action Congress of Nigeria, yesterday, said it has no
confidence that the Inspector General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, will ensure a
free and fair election, and therefore demanded his immediate removal from
office before the April general elections.

The party’s National Chairman, Bisi Akande, who revealed the
party’s stance at a press conference held in Lagos, said Mr Ringim’s management
of some politically linked arrests is biased against the opposition party,
reading out also a litany of several cases of “biased handling” of political
violence across the country. The party particularly expressed dismay about the
treason charge against its gubernatorial candidate in Akwa Ibom State, John
Udoedehe. He said it now appears that any challenge from an opposition party
against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration is a treasonable.

“It is against this backdrop that an emergency meeting of our
party leadership was convened to review the events and a vote of no confidence
passed on Mr Hafiz Ringim as his activities are a shame to the noble profession
of policing,” he said. “We are saying that with an Inspector-General like Hafiz
‘Rigging’, the 2007 horrors may turn out to be a child’s play. We are not
comfortable with Hafiz Ringim as the Inspector-General of Police and we call
for his immediate removal.”

Other demands

The party also demanded: “the immediate and unconditional
release of John Udoedehe, the institution of an independent panel of enquiry
into the endless assassinations, kidnappings and other forms of violence that
have claimed scores of lives in Akwa Ibom State since the emergence of Godswill
Akpabio as governor in 2007, and the immediate release of the ACN voluntary
workers detained in Ilorin, Kwara State, for repairing a community road and
other states.”

Mr Akande said that “a mass rally is to hold simultaneously all
over the country by our teeming supporters at a later date to press home the
above demands and to demonstrate our will to resist the continuous acts of
terrorism by the police.”

Why the military?

Mr Akande also said the party is averse to the deployment of
military troops for the purpose of ensuring a peaceful election, a job he said
is meant for the police. “We in the ACN are vehemently opposed to the constant
recourse to military men for constabulary duties,” he said. “Our political
history vividly teaches that we are inviting trouble for ourselves by the
reckless use of soldiers for partisan duties. The Jonathan administration is
only following the familiar path of drafting soldiers during elections to
intimidate the opposition and tilt the polls in favour of the PDP.”

The campaign director of the party’s presidential candidate,
Audu Ogbe, said only the PDP was against the electoral commission’s decision to
adopt the open secret ballot system. “Nigerian voters are no threat to the
election, rather it is the corrupt politician who is afraid of the people’s
choice,” he said. Mr Ogbe warned voters to be alert, especially on the issue of
extra ballot papers. “INEC has no reason to send any extra ballot paper to any
polling unit because we already know the number of registered voters in all the
units,” he said.