State Electoral Commissions, Govs’ Tool To Rig Elections

The immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai has described states’ electoral commissions as rigging tools of the state governors.

El-Rufai stated this on Monday in Maiduguri, in his lead paper presentation titled: “Capacity Building Workshop on Enhancing Skills of Government Officials In Policy Implementation and Productive Human Resources Management”.

The former governor recalled the success recorded through electronic voting for local government areas elections he conducted during his tenure as governor.

He also narrated how a Northwest state governor wanted to use his pattern, but after availing him of the technique used in conducting the elections, he went back to his state and wrote results of the local government elections he conducted instead of conducting it electronically.

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The former governor who expressed total support of abolishing state electoral commissions stressed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could be handling all local government elections.

“While I was the Governor of Kaduna State, I introduced electronic voting and conducted local government election with it. After the election, we lost about three to four local government areas to the opposition, because of the credibility of the election. And because we were transparent in the election, some of those opposition candidates decamped to our party because of our fairness in the election.

“I remember that one governor from the Northwest who loved the conduct of the election through electronic voting asked me to assist him with the technology I used in the election, but because it has the state logo, I told him that it would not cost more than 10,000 US dollars, so that he can get the equipment to conduct his state LGA election electronically. But after that conversation, I did not hear from him again, he went back home and conducted his election by writing the results as usual,” El-Rufai said.

On the demolition exercise in Kaduna during his administration, El-Rufai said prior to assumption of office, the people knew who he was, and that he was very careful at ensuring that every demolition carried followed due process.

He added that his government’ is adherence to the process was responsible for the absence of court cases after the exercise.