The Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) in 2023, Bishop Isaac Idahosa, stated that money politicking and failure of the regulatory authorities to check activities of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and public officials for electoral misconducts has prolong improper practice in Nigeria electoral standard.
Ally to the former Kano Governor and the 2023 NNPP presidential candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, stressed that once there are is no consequences for actions and inactions that are short of acceptable standards, such misconduct will persist.
“We don’t punish anybody for what he does; there are no consequences, so he keeps on repeating it. Money politicking has taken over the system”.
“INEC does this, and nobody puts them to check, and then it repeats it. Once there are no consequences for your actions or inactions, then a repeat will occur because there is no accountability.”
The electoral umpire INEC introduced its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) for the 2023 general elections, but many politicians faulted the efficiency of the two technologies during the polls with INEC citing technical glitches for the tackiness.
In the last election, Kwankwaso, alongside his running mate Idahosa, finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes, while Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) got 8,794,726 votes, followed by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) who scored 6,101,533 votes.
The election results were challenged up to the Supreme Court, but the apex court ruled that the unavailability of results on IReV was not grounds for nullification of the poll.
Furthermore, Idahosa lamented that some persons in government have become more powerful than institutions, and this continues to affect governance in the country.
The NNPP chieftain said all elections should be regularized and conducted on the same day for transparency, in order to help curb a whole lot of things. It will cut costs and will get the desirable results. But when you have this in a span of one or two weeks after the presidential, a whole lot can go, bandwagon can go.”
“To begin with, I’m still very close to my principal; he was here last week, the 8th of February when I celebrated my 60th birthday. So we are still very in touch, we are very close. No crisis in our party, he’s still our national leader, His Excellency Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
“We don’t have factions; those so-called factions have been expelled from the party. There is no room to emphasize factions in our party – we just got one party headed and being led by His Excellency, Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso”.
