‘See your reappointment as an opportunity to improve Nigeria’s electoral process,’ PDP tells INEC chairman

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday charged the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to see his reappointment as an opportunity to improve the nation’s electoral processes.

The party made the call in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja.

President Muhammadu Buhari re-appointed Yakubu as INEC chairman for another term of five years on Tuesday.

Ologbondiyan said the INEC chief’s reappointment entrusted him with the fate, hope, and future of some 200 million Nigerians and the generations yet unborn.

He said the party believed that miscarriages of justice in the country’s electoral process would have no place in the new order.

The PDP spokesman stressed that with Yakubu’s reappointment, he had been given an ample time and opportunity to redeem the image of INEC and prepare for more credible, free and fair elections in the country.

READ ALSO: Buhari re-appoints Yakubu as INEC chairman

Ologbondiyan said: “At least, with this reappointment whatever happens in our future elections cannot be ascribed to inexperience and lack of adequate preparedness on the side of INEC.

“We consider this reappointment by President Muhammadu Buhari as an impetus to demonstrate a readiness for a free, fair, and credible election, which Mr. President had always promised to bequeath at the end of his second and final term in office in 2023.”

He urged the INEC chairman to spend about two years before the next general election to rejig the situation at the commission.

“Yakubu should work out appropriate electoral policies and guidelines and push for an amendment of the Electoral Act, in conjunction with the National Assembly, to give our nation a credible electoral process.

“He must be mindful of the aphorism that to whom much is given, much more is expected.

“His reappointment, therefore, comes with a lot of expectations by Nigerians,” he added.

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