Says the commission wasn’t prepared

By Gabriel Enogholase

BENIN—FORMER President of Trade Union Congress, TUC, Mr. Peter Esele, has blamed the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for the postponement of the general elections from February to March 2015, insisting that from every indication, the electoral body was not ready to conduct the elections.

Esele, who spoke with journalists in Benin, Edo State, yesterday, while reacting to the shifting of the polls, said citing security reasons to move the elections forward was simply a leeway to cover INEC’s inefficiency.

He said: “I think citing security reasons is just to find an excuse for INEC’s dereliction of duties. I believe that INEC, in the first place, knows that election takes place every four years. When I read comments by Nigerians about the postponement of the elections, sometimes I feel very disappointed because in Nigeria, why should we keep having problem but choose to treat symptoms and not the causes. INEC had four years to prepare for the elections, what did they do in the past four years?

“All we need to do is to go back to the basics and find out what was the cause and why we cannot hold elections same day since 1999. The day we held election in 1999 was different from that of 2003; 2007 was different from 2003 and 2011 different from 2007 and now 2015 is different still.

“We need to ask INEC why they were not prepared for the elections because they had four years to prepare and why they were ot ready.

“In 2011, the election was postponed for two weeks when people were already being accredited. Now the election is being postponed for six weeks. Why do we keep having that problem? Does it mean we don’t have project managers to manage things like that? These are some of the questions we should ask INEC. What should we do to make sure that it does not reoccur?”