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Senator Shehu Sani representing Kaduna Central has described the last general elections as the worst ever in the country’s annals, following the irregularities that trailed it.
The activist, who lost his return bid to the Senate, has challenged the result of the election at the tribunal.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Political Affairs, Uba Sani, defeated him at the polls.
According to the senator, though there is no perfection in the conduct of elections anywhere in the world, “no sensible person will say the 2019 elections is credible or above the standard of the 2015 elections which gave President Muhammadu Buhari victory.”
He pointed out: “We saw the effort of former President Goodluck Jonathan before the 2015 general elections. Also we have seen the systematic subversion of election matters under this government. Since the build-up to the recent elections, there have been a lot of infractions and distortion.
“Some have been with us for very long time. The 2019 general election was characterised by armed thuggery, massive abuse and misuse of security personnel, vote-buying, acts of intimidation against voters and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials, manipulation of results and figures and indiscriminate allocation of votes.”
The senator argued that the people that died, the number of mandates stolen, and the way the voting process was discredited were all “issues we need to take into consideration to determine if we are really growing our democracy or retarding it.”
He added that a situation where political leaders buy themselves into public offices or use violence and intimidation to force themselves back to power would not augur well for the nation.
“One of the cardinal pillars of democracy is the ability of the citizens to elect their leaders freely. But when the process is destroyed, undermined and decimated, then the legitimacy of people who are going to occupy public offices will be seriously questioned. This is where we find ourselves today.”