April Poll-Nigeria - Only the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the various security agencies will ensure that the forthcoming 2011 general elections will be free, fair and credible. This was the view of the presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, who spoke yesterday in Abuja when he received the International Observers led by the former president of Ghana, John Kufuor. Shekarau who is also the governor of Kano State was addressing the observers from the International Republican Institute (IRI), who were in the country on a pre-election assessment of the preparations of the stakeholder for the April general elections.

The presidential hopeful while reacting on what he considered as bug threats to the exercise said that all arrangements have pointed to the fact that the elections should be peaceful, credible, free and fair but insisted that only the two organizations were key to a successful outcome of the elections.

According to him, without the collaboration and connivance of INEC and the security agencies, no electoral fraud could take place at least going by what has happened in the past.

"The two principal actors in Nigeria's elections are the INEC and the security agencies. If the two can collaborate, and put their feet down that they will do the right thing, then no party or politician, no matter how influential will succeed in manipulating the electoral process. These are two areas where the threat can come from."

The soft spoken governor also said another factor that encourages electoral fraud is those who have indulged in it in the past were never meant to suffer but regretted that they were more or less given a pat on the back.

Nevertheless, the candidate raised hope that going by the caliber of people in INEC today, he was optimistic that they will be able to deliver an election that everybody will be happy with.

"What we need is to build on the process and confidence that the election will be free and fair because we know that even in developed nations, they do have skirmishes but that on the long run does not detract from the integrity of the process".

He however blamed poor funding as one of the factors that negatively affect the preparation of INEC for elections even as he regretted that the problems associated with the voters registration exercise was because money was not made available in time for INEC to procure the Direct Data Capturing (DDC) machines.

Jude Opara

Daily Champion/04/03/2011