Senator Ikechukwu Obiorah has submitted a constitutional amendment to the National Assembly to strip the president and governors the power to appoint members of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and State Independent National Electoral Commissions (SIECs).
According to him, the power should be taken from them and put in a neutral body, which, he said, would trigger processes in motion for lifting Nigeria out of poverty.
The proposed bill, which is already before the Senate and the House of Representatives, would help to address the non-existence of honest, transparent, free and fair elections in Nigeria, which has caused the present mass poverty and gross underdevelopment in the nation.
The lawyer, author and senator, who represented Anambra South Senatorial district between 2007 and 2011 in the National Assembly, stated this in his treatise on ‘The Philosophy of Elections and Nigeria’s Fake Democracy,’ and made available to journalists in Abuja on Sunday.
Senator Obiorah disclosed that over ninety percent of all elections so far held in Nigeria, since independence till date, have been brazenly rigged or perverted, thus causing the mass poverty and underdevelopment being experienced in the country.
The former senator reasoned that had the people been allowed to be exercising the power to freely elect their leaders since 1960, Nigeria would, by now, be a fully developed nation by the first world standards and ramifications.
He said: “Since Independence, 90 percent of all elections, parliamentary, presidential, National Assembly, governorship, House of Assembly, Local Government Council elections, have been brazenly stolen or rigged or perverted or altogether thwarted or nullified.
“In other words, Nigerians have never really and voluntarily chosen their leaders, nor have Nigerians ever been governed with their proper consent and participation.”
By Samuel Ogidan @DailyIndependence
