The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) has said that the idea of having military chiefs determine when elections will hold is a mockery of democracy.

The campaign organisation, however, expressed appreciation to the military for its readiness to deploy troops for the elections but said that its services would be better utilised in other pressing areas, especially in combating insurgency and protection of the territorial integrity of the country.

The APCPCO made its position known, on Friday in Abuja, against the backdrop of Wednesday’s assertion to the Senate by the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, that service chiefs would have to ratify the March 28 date for the presidential election in the country and the military’s expression of readiness to deploy troops for the polls.

The APC campaign, in a statement by the Director, Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, noted that “the military and democracy are not complementary and subjecting the fate of a democracy to the military is a coup against the people.”

Shehu called on INEC to take cognisance of the courts’ ruling on the role of the military in elections and the military’s own commitment of its readiness to deploy troops for the 2015 elections.

The statement read in part: “The idea of placing the fate of democracy in the hands of the military is not only alien to the Nigerian constitution; extant judicial pronouncements have clearly stipulated that the military has no duty to play in the conduct of elections.

“We are not comfortable with any attempt to draft the military into election function and are reassured by the declaration by President Jonathan that the elections would hold as scheduled by INEC on March 28 and April 11.

“We have carefully studied positions made by the INEC chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday and we want to put it on record that we are not in any way comfortable with the idea that service chiefs will determine whether the March 28 date of the presidential election is feasible or not.

“The concepts of democracy and the military are never complementary, and to say that the military will determine when an election will hold is antithetical to the very idea of democracy. It is akin to a coup against the people of Nigeria to subject the fate of our democracy in the hands of a few military service chiefs.

“For the avoidance of any doubts, the APC presidential campaign organisation will not accept any attempt to subvert the electoral processes of democracy in the country.

“The Nigerian constitution is very clear about how the electoral processes in the country should be run and there is no single clause of the constitution that makes the service chiefs to preside over the conduct of elections.

“Furthermore, there are extant judicial pronouncements specifically at two Courts of Appeal, the recent being that on the Ekiti governorship election that bars the military from undertaking any role whatsoever in the conduct of elections in the country. These are in addition to a similar pronouncement by the Supreme Court.

“The only role that the constitution assigns to the military is to protect the territorial integrity of the country and not to determine if and when an election should hold.

“As far as we are concerned at the APC presidential campaign organisation, we are ready for the elections on March 28 and April 11, and INEC is ready as confirmed by Professor Jega during the plenary of the Senate and Nigerians are also ready for the election.”

Also, the campaign organisation has alleged that the PDP is planning to blackmail Muslim clerics and district heads in the North over the issue of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

The campaign organisation accused the government of planning to use security agencies to shift the paradigm of public perception of corruption to the camp of the opposition by witch-hunting some Northern Muslim clerics and district heads as having stolen PVCs to rig the March 28 presidential election in favour of their kinsman and candidate of the APC, General Muhammadu Buhari.

“If this clandestine plan is hatched like the use of the military to rig the polls in governorship election in Ekiti State last year, or the underhand treatment currently being given to INEC and other state institutions, we in the APC and majority of fellow Nigerian men and women would disbelieve it, resist it and question it till such an oppressive decision is rescinded and the anomaly rectified.

“Information at our disposal shows that certain state agencies like the Customs, Immigration, Police and so on are waiting in the wings to mop up PVCs across the country (possibly from illegal immigrants) and bundle them on hapless religious leaders and district heads of Northern extraction, to corroborate PDP’s over-flogged narrative that people in the Northern states have collected voter cards by proxy; even though INEC top shots have publicly denied such allegations. The ploy to also heap this electoral offence on APC and Buhari supporters is, to say the least, dastardly, cruel and heinous.

“Election must not be seen or taken as a do-or-die affair. Nigeria belongs to all Nigerians and the best hands should govern it. After all, the opposition has won elections in Senegal, Ghana, Sri Lanka, among others. Why should ours be an exemption?

 “What President Jonathan and his party should learn from their multifarious campaign of malice and mudslinging, to which millions of state funds are daily being pumped, is that Nigerians are not buying their lies and they will voice out their anger through the ballot at the polls in March and April.

“No amount of cajolery or harassment can bottle the people’s power to elect their leaders. It is a constitutional right that not even the military has the power to remove. General Buhari is a man of proven integrity and honesty. These are the attributes that endear him to the masses.”

Source: TRIBUNE