By Clifford Ndujhide & Dapo Akinrefon

The Action Congress of   Nigeria (ACN) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) have rejected the INEC’s unilateral decision to fix the postponed National Assembly elections for tomorrow.

Both parties said, yesterday, that they do not have the logistics to participate in the elections in the new date fixed by the electoral body.

The ACN specifically asked for Saturday, April 9, as the new date for the National Assembly polls.

In a statement by its national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, ACN said: ‘’We reject this unilateral decision by INEC to fix the postponed National Assembly election for Monday.

The new date does not give us enough time to re-mobilise our agents and put in place the necessary logistics. The only day between Saturday and Monday is Sunday, when banks do not open. Where does he expect us to get the funds to mobilise our agents for Monday’s election? Only the PDP can quickly mobilise such funds. So that date cannot stand,  unless Jega is working against the opposition”.

In a phone chat, Mohammed said there were about 120,000 polling units in the country; if a party paid N2,000 per agent, then it would need N240 million for the Monday rescheduled exercise. Across the parties, about six billion may be required, it was learnt.

Consequently, the ACN suggested that the National Assembly elections should be held on Saturday, April 9, while the presidential election could be postponed to the middle of the upper week, and the governorship/State Assembly election could still be held on April 16.

The party also described the bungling of the National Assembly polls as a national calamity and an avoidable embarrassment, which would further expose Nigeria to ridicule in the comity of nations.

ACN said while it appreciated the INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega’s candour in admitting INEC’s shortcoming and took responsibility for it, that did not mitigate the fact that Nigerians had been embarrassed and their enthusiasm dampened by the commission’s mis-step.

‘’For instance, if the materials were supposed to have arrived on Thursday and they did not arrive, as Jega said, shouldn’t INEC have saved Nigerians this huge embarrassment and wastage of scarce resources by postponing the poll, instead of cancelling it after it has started?

The CPC, which spoke through Mr Yinka Odumakin, media aide to the party’s presidential candidate, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, his media aide, Buhari said that the call against the Monday date for the rescheduled polls was based on the fact since no banks will be open for work on that day, CPC  will not be able to withdraw money for its agents.

According to him, “we want to advise INEC not to fix the National Assembly elections for Monday because the opposition political parties will not have access to cash since financial institutions will not operate on Monday. With the banks closed, we will not have sufficient cash to give to our agents. Only the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, will have access to money because it has governors who already stashed sufficient cash to prosecute the elections.”

He, however, advised that “if the elections goes ahead as planned by INEC, it will be to the disadvantage of opposition political parties. Instead, we will advise INEC to conduct the National Assembly elections on the same day with that of the presidential election. Since INEC says it has only two ballot boxes for the Senate and House of Representatives elections, it has all the time to ensure an additional box is provided for the presidential election.”