By Peter Duru, Makurdi

The Middle Belt Forum, MBF, has described as baseless the claim by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami that Nigeria would have been in crisis if President Muhammadu Buhari had signed into law the amended Electoral Act.

The National President of MBF, Dr Bitrus Pogu who was reacting to the statement Monday in Makurdi, advised President Buhari to give Nigerians what they demanded of him by signing the amended Electoral Act to usher the country into an era of the improved electoral process.

Hear him: “What Malami said was baseless rubbish. These people make assumptions based on their perception; they try to instil fear in the people. Which crisis is he talking about? Didn’t President Buhari come in through direct primaries; is that not what the All Progressives Congress, APC, used? Did it throw the country into crisis?

“The issue is yes, it is true that parties have the liberty to choose the kind of selection process they would use to conduct their primaries; we have no quarrel with that.

“The problem of Nigeria is not whether it is direct or indirect primaries. The problem of Nigeria is how to stop the wanton rigging of elections in the country by the manipulation of election results, changing of results, the cancellation of results, throwing out of results just to declare who they want.

“And we can address that by transmitting results from the polling units direct to the server, everybody sees it and you do not alter the figures. That is the thing we want for Nigeria.

“We can from there move forward to another level, but what we want at this level is that results should be electronically transmitted from the polling stations to the collation centres.

“By so doing you cut off all the so-called Returning Officers and the excuses of cancellation of results unnecessarily because some people do not want results that did not favour them and all that.

“Besides it will save cost because most of the Returning Officers are no more useful. As the results come out we all see them and Nigeria will be better for it because the right people will be elected into offices.

“So what Malami said does not hold water at all. The President who appointed him came into office through direct primaries. And whether it is direct or not that is not our problem. Let the President sign the amended Electoral Act so that we can have a better and credible election by 2023. And all the bad experiences of 2019 and others in the past would be halted.”

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