Women across the twenty one local government areas of Kogi state have called for the outright cancellation the recently concluded presidential and national assembly elections in the country.
They said the February 25th general elections be countermand, declared null and void and a rerun be organised as soon as possible.
Addressing a press conference on behalf of the women group in Lokoja, Esther Opaluwah decried the chaos, brigandage, widespread violence and deaths recorded during the polls.
The women also want all the perpetrators of violence around Kogi state, “especially in the Central and Eastern axis who were arrested be brought to justice and be made to pay for the lives they wasted in the course of carrying out the orders of desperate politicians who wants to win at all cost and resorted to ballot box snatching.”
Opaluwah said a searchlight be beamed on the activities of the agencies of the government of Kogi state with a view to bringing all those that used their official capacities to thwart the will of the people, especially the Local Government Chairmen in the state with a view to bringing them to justice.
The women also demanded that the families who were bereaved or injured in the course of carrying out their civic responsibility and right to vote to elect their preferred leaders but were disenfranchised, bruised battered and even killed be compensated.
“As you are all aware a significant date in the history of Nigeria just passed, a date that has become a watershed in the democratic story of Nigeria. Indeed, 25th of February 2023 was a date all Nigerians home and abroad waited for with baited breath, for it was date that will make the beginning of another democratic dispensation in our country and everyone including our youth and women eagerly participated in all the activities that led to that date.
“It was a day when the INEC chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu had assured Nigerians severally of their preparedness for this fateful day backed with the latest technology, funding and the necessary laws (electoral act 2022) to take our electoral processes to the next level. We even endured the sufferings the currency redesigned policy inflicted on us all in a bid to sanitize our electoral processes.
“But the day – 25th of February 2023 – ended in chaos, brigandage and even deaths. As we lament and mourn over what had happened during the day at almost all the Polling stations, our traumatized sensibilities was further damaged with what we were seeing right there on the screens of our televisions which was quite the opposite of what the Federal Government and our President Muhammadu Buhari, the NASS, Security Chiefs and even the electoral umpire had been assuring us will happen.
“We therefore demand that what happened on the 25th of February which the INEC called election be cancelled, declared null and void and a rerun be organised as soon as possible,” she said.
The women group charged Governor Yahaya Bello to play his role as chief security officer of the state, and not limit himself to being the leader of his political party.
