6th August, 2010
The Ondo State chapter of Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) has expressed its dismay at the statement made by the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega on the appropriateness of posting the former Resident Electoral Commissioner to Ekiti State, Mrs. Ayoka Adebayo, to Ondo.
The group also called on Mrs Adebayo to immediately honour her resignation that was publicly tendered in April 2009 and has not be withdrawn to date.
The group made the call in a statement issued in Akure by the group’s Director of Media and Publicity, Bola Ilori.
Ilori said: “We see Jega’s readiness to vouch for the ‘credibility’ of Mrs. Adebayo after the well known Ekiti show of shame last year is proof that Jega is play-acting on the much celebrated commitment of the new INEC to conduct credible elections in this country.
“We believe that Jega knows the antecedents of Mrs. Adebayo and her alleged close relationship with former president, Olusegun Obasanjo; a relationship that was called into play when she was needed to recant on her insistence that she would not announce a cooked up result for the purpose of swinging victory to the PDP in the infamous Ekiti bye election of April 2009. Even if Jega claims ignorance of Adebayo’s close liaison with Obasanjo, we hope he knows about the lousy boast of Obasanjo recently that he must conquer Ondo State for his political courtiers in the next election.
“Ondo CNPP wants to even give Jega the benefit of knowing the foregoing serious issues but we would not forgive him if he claims ignorance of the shameful maneuvers that attended the shameless mockery that was brought to bear on the Ekiti bye elections in April 2009, with Adebayo at the centre of it all. We do not want to believe that Jega was so uninformed not to know of the scurrilous drama of her resignation and being forced by desperate presidency officials to come out and announce the PDP as winner, despite her resignation, after a clearly forged result was smuggled in from Ido Osi for that purpose.”
Ilori further stated: “We therefore demand the immediate redeployment of Mrs. Adebayo to such places as INEC Headquarters, if Jega still feels he still needs discredited INEC officials to deliver a credible election.â€
Ondo CNPP also demanded the sack of all the electoral officials that featured in the massive rigging of both the 2003 and 2007 elections but who are strangely being retained in a very doubtful project to conduct a very credible election in 2011.