The Presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN),Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, has asked the Chairman of the IndependentNational Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mamoud Yakubu, to reversethe recent deployment of Mrs. Amina Zakari as one of its commissioners.

It would be recalled that Zakari, who is well known as President Muhammadu Buhari’s relation, was on Thursday announced thechairperson of INEC’s Results Collation Centre in the February 2019elections.

Reacting to her appointment, Ezekwesili, in a press statement, yesterday, said, “The INEC chairman appears to have bowed to pressurefrom the Presidency.”She described Zakari’s appointment as political corruption, “consideringthat having a relation of the President who is a contestant in theFebruary 2019 presidential election amounts to an apparentconflict-of-interest situation. Such repugnant deployment of Zakari to the collationcentres suggests a brazen attempt to ease rigging for the APC’scandidate in the elections.”

To ensure peace and give all the candidates a level playing ground, theACPN presidential candidate asked INEC to restore confidence in themanagement of the collation process by reversing Zakari’s appointment as chairperson.

“Zakari can be assigned another task farther away from tasks that canhinder electoral integrity,” Ezekwesili added. Ezekwesili said the latest development compounded doubts about thePresident’s interest in presiding over a credible 2019 elections, when herefused to assent to the Electoral Amendment Bill 2018.

She said: “Worse still, under President Buhari, the public has beenalarmed at the gross misuse of security establishments to compromiseelections in places like Osun and Ekiti States. Any attempt to repeatsuch abuse of state institutions in the 2019 elections for the ruling APC’s benefit must be averted to avoid throwing the country intopolitical crisis.

“The President should lead a discussion among candidates and parties toset the rules that will guide the security forces in the 2019 elections.Ideally, the military and police establishments should be pulled out ofthe involvement in our elections, considering the damning evidences ofhow their personnel disenfranchised voters in Osun and Ekitigovernorship elections. “I call on the international community to join the Nigerian people andprevail on President Buhari to practise the Peace Accord, with exemplaryactions, in order to build confidence in the process he ebullientlyled.”

•Sourced from The Guardian report