AYCF Fumes Over Labour Party Calls for INEC Chairman’s Sack
AYCF Fumes Over Labour Party Calls for INEC Chairman’s Sack
By: Our Correspondent
The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) has expressed dismay over the Labour Party’s calls for the sacking of the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, stating that they are bad losers and intolerant players.
This was contained in a statement by the National President of AYCF, Alhaji Yarima Shettima, and made available to the media.
The statement noted that AYCF observed from the outset of the presidential election that the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and his supporters never accepted the fundamental truth that losing is always possible.
The statement added, “If Peter Obi and his Labour Party are not willing to accept the possibility that they might be defeated, then they should not be running for office in the first place.”
AYCF said the LP and Obi are not happy that the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, has lived up to his commitment to a credible and verifiable election process supported by technology, which guarantees transparent accreditation and upload of polling unit results for citizens to view in real-time on election day.
“The fact that LP and their supporters have given themselves the false hope that tried to guarantee victory for Obi long before the elections explains why they are still unhappy that the deployment of a Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) were made sacrosanct by the INEC chairman.
“Many stakeholders, except of course, Obi and LP, considered it a game-changer in Nigeria’s electoral process for Yakubu to have gone to such great lengths to deploy technology for the purpose of restoring integrity to the ballot box in Nigeria.
“It is not surprising that no matter how credible the 2023 February elections turned out to be, bad losers like Obi would opt to discredit the outcome and imperil democracy,” Shettima said.
He warned that it is essential for candidates and their parties, as well as all their supporters seeking to help them win the election, to refrain from brash assertions of victory that suggest defeat is only possible if there is fraud.
