Nigeria Content Online

A Senior Advocate
of Nigeria, Adeniyi Akintola, has called for an immediate redeployment
of all Commissioners of Police in states across the country, warning
that their retention will compromise the forthcoming general elections.

Mr Akintola, in an
interview at the weekend, said most of the police chiefs have sold
themselves to governors, adding that if they are allowed to supervise
elections in their current states of posting, the country will not
achieve the desired free, fair and credible polls.

“Retention of
police heads ahead of the elections would not mean much in saner
climes,” he said, “but not in a place like Nigeria where all those in
that position and their counterparts in similar agencies believe that
their allegiance is first to the Chief Executive Officer of the
state/country rather to the constitution.”

Mr Akintola also
challenged Nigerians to ask the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) what logistics to it plans to deploy to achieve its
promise of credible polls.

He said past
elections had been flawed despite the fact that no previous heads of
the electoral body had promised to deliver compromised polls.

Citing the 2007
presidential election as an example, he said the plane that brought
electoral materials from South Africa arrived the country at 2.30 p.m.
on the day of the presidential election, adding that the chartered
plane assigned to deliver that of Adamawa only left the airport around
5.30pm the same day.

“The rational
question to ask is how did voting take place in the state that same day
and results declared? All those were reasons why the 2007 election
could not be regarded as election but selection and the more reason why
Nigerians should, from now, be on guard and make sure that they are not
carried away by INEC’s promises,” Mr Akintola said.

No landslides

The lawyer said he
foresees a political future similar to that of 1979, where parties
govern parts of the country where they are popular.

“If APGA is the
most popular party in Anambra State and wins the election, so be it and
if CPC should win in Kaduna or Kano, let it be so. There will be peace
in the country,” he said.

“If people’s votes are made to count as being promised by the
president, I foresee a situation where the people of the South-West
will go for another party aside the ruling Peoples Democratic Party
[PDP] and the North-West voting for party of their choice, ditto for
other zones. For the country to move forward, the powers that be should
forget the idea of landslide, because it was the landslide idea of 1983
that led to gun slide.”