3rd July, 2018
The Democratic People’s Party (DPP) has expressed confidence that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will conduct credible governorship election in Ekiti State.
DPP National Chairman, Mr Gershom Benson, expressed the confidence on Tuesday in Abuja.
Benson said that with the level of preparations and improvement on the commission’s technology, there was no doubt that INEC under, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, would continue to deliver free and fair elections.
“We believe that INEC will do the right thing in Ekiti State governorship election, scheduled for July 14. One of the things giving us confidence is that the commission’s technology has improved. So we have confidence in them.”
Benson, however, advised INEC to continue to do the right things, including the conduct of 2019 general elections.
“February election is another way to sell ourselves in the international community that we can always do it better.’’
Benson also expressed confidence that DPP would win the Ekiti election, saying the party was already reaching out to people at the grassroots.
Reacting to the recent report by the Brookings Institution, which rated Nigeria as the country with the highest number of poor persons in the world, Benson said efforts must be made to address the matter.
He also attributed the rate of the poverty level to high level of corruption, lack of statistics, insincere leadership.
“There is massive corruption. People steal and hide the money which was supposed to be used for one project or the other to create job.’’
“There is a disconnection between what government is doing, the intentions they want to achieve and what they want the people to know.
“The people believe that government is witch hunting the opponents, and because of that, they don’t see the seriousness in it.
“If it is across the board, whether it is All Progressives Congress (APC) or the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or any party, Nigeria would have taken over the war against corruption.’’
Benson said one of the ways to address poverty in Nigeria was to boost infrastructure development, provision of steady power supply and removal of multiple taxations.”
The DPP National chairman also condemned the recent killings in Jos.
Benson wondered why the killing took several hours without intervention from the security agencies in spite of many security formations in Plateau.
He advised citizens not to take laws into their hands but seek redress through the court whenever they were aggrieved.
Benson also decried what he called the failure of the security architecture and poor intelligence gathering on the killings in different parts of the country.
He expressed support for the calls for change in the leadership of security agencies in the country.
“I agree that present leadership of our security agencies need to be replaced.