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PRESS RELEASE: On the Rigging in Ekiti South Federal Constituency Elections to House of Rep. on Saturday April 22, 2006

By now, you must have read or at least heard what transpired in the bye-election held in the Ekiti South Federal Constituency II on Saturday, 22 April 2006. It was not that we did not envisage the attempt to foist a blatant rigging process on the general citizenry.

So that the World May Know:  On the Rigging in Ekiti South Federal Constituency Elections to House of Rep.

By now, you must have read or at least heard what transpired in the bye-election held in the Ekiti South Federal Constituency II on Saturday, 22 April 2006. It was not that we did not envisage the attempt to foist a blatant rigging process on the general citizenry. Indeed, we warned that this was in the offing. We, in the Alliance for Democracy and our colleagues in the Ekiti Agenda gave evidence of these planned illegalities to both the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Police authorities. We had hoped that unlike in 2003, the two national institutions responsible for ensuring the sanctity of the elections and the security of all citizens were themselves not going to be at the centre of the brigandage foisted on Ekiti people. We can confirm without any hesitation that the Police and INEC authorities were not only complicit but also very active in the perpetration of this electoral fraud. To assist the two key perpetrators of this electoral fraud in this act were political thugs from the National Road Transport Workers Union (NURTW) in Ekiti State led by one Omolafe Aderiye, their Chairman.

Whilst we are still gathering evidence of all that transpired, we can confirm the following police officers of the 33 Police Mobile Force Unit/Ekiti State Government House contingent were involved in this rape of democracy. They were present and were identified stealing ballot boxes, thumb-printing ballot papers, disenfranchising legitimate voters and harassing our party officials. By the morning of the polls, Police had in their custody no fewer than forty-nine of our party faithfuls, including our candidate, Chief Samuel Idiowo and the Chair of our Election monitoring Committee, Navy Captain (Rtd) Caleb Olubolade, former Military Administrator in Bayelsa State and Gubernatorial aspirant in the Alliance for Democracy and not a single PDP member in detention. A clear case of punishing the victims!

In a series of meetings that party leaders held with the Police Commissioner, Mrs Ivy Okoronkwo and her officers on Saturday, 22 April 2006 - they all denied complicity and rejected any notion of bias on the part of the police authorities. Yet, there is an allegation that N5million had changed hands between Governor Ayo Fayose and the Police Commissioner with the Chief Security Officer, Gbenga James as the intermediary in the transaction. Although we are not in a position to confirm if this is true or not, we can inform the general public at least that the following underlisted police men were involved in what happened on Saturday. Our investigating team saw all of them in various places in the federal constituency and we challenge the police authorities to deny our claim. We have taken pain to name names, rank and staff number of these men and also the vehicles used by the NURTW drivers in the perpetration of these heinous acts.

It is now clear to us that the PDP government in Nigeria remains determined to repeat the electoral fraud that was largely undertaken by them across the country in 2003. Whilst the new leadership of INEC, Professor Maurice Iwu had finally admitted that the 2003 elections were not "credible", what happened in Ekiti State on Saturday, 22 April 2006 has brought into clear relief that a leopard hardly changes its spots easily. INEC is still the handmaiden of the executive branch of government in every sense and there is no way we as democrats will be involved in any further elections at the behest of INEC unless there is incontrovertible evidence of a level playing field. The non-election in Ekiti has shown that INEC is not in the least interested in its own independence nor the credibility of the elections. Even when leaders of the AD visited INEC and expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of the elections and with the fact that its' staff was complicit, the supervising National Commissioner - Mrs Odebiyi displayed almost utter disdain for the representatives of the coalition of parties present in the INEC office. Even if it was true that the Resident Electoral Commissioner had been compromised as we already learned, we had expected that an external party like the Supervising Commissioner would be better placed to be an impartial arbiter, particularly after we received credible information that her own Director of Operations, Alhaji A.A.Kagara from INEC Headquarters in Abuja was beaten up for challenging the electoral fraud being perpetrated in the home of the State's Deputy Governor, Mrs Olujimi in Omuo Ekiti.

What is clear to us is that the situation in Ekiti State, and indeed Nigeria calls for a return to the barricades in order to secure the liberty of our people. If the people's true votes will not count, there is no point even legitimising this brazen electoral fraud. The people will fight for their freedom and defend their inalienable right to determine who shall be their leaders. This is why we would ensure that the Ekiti South Federal Constituency fraud cannot and will not STAND. We are determined to do everything to defend our people.

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As major stakeholders in freeing our people from the shackles of oppression and restoring the sanctity of this fragile democracy, we urge you all to take the following steps in helping to ensure that this monumental fraud does not stand: