• Candidates sign peace pact on Wednesday

THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) appears set to prove its critics wrong that it lacked the capacity to conduct credible elections.

And the rescheduled Kogi State governorship polls may be the platform to do just that.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, yesterday sent a senior official from his Abuja office to Lokoja, the Kogi State capital, for discussion with candidates for the by-election slated for March 29.

At the end, INEC rolled out new rules, which the commission believes will lead to a hitch-free election and make the results acceptable to all parties.

First, the commission has barred indigenes of the state from being engaged as electoral officers and ad-hoc personnel.

Second, all electoral officials at the local councils and the INEC commissioner in the state have been redeployed while party agents will witness the distribution of election materials from INEC secretariat in Lokoja to their local councils.

In the place of the indigenes, INEC has drawn its electoral officers and ad-hoc workers from 12 states to conduct the polls.

The candidates also agreed to sign undertaking to maintain law and order.

Since the conduct of the April 2007 polls, Iwu has come under severe criticisms from within and outside the country over his shoddy handling of the exercise.

INEC's exclusion of some governorship candidates from the election led to the voiding of the victory of Idris Ibrahim as Kogi governor and his Adamawa State counterpart, Murtala Nyako.

But Iwu has consistently absolved the commission of blame and instead held the parties and candidates responsible for the tribunals' nullification of several elections.

The commission yesterday read the riot act to all stakeholders in the electoral process, saying it would not be business as usual.

INEC listed the measures it had put in place to check rigging and reduce manipulation during the by-election to include that party agents will be allowed to witness distribution of election materials from the commission's secretariat to their respective local councils.

The INEC secretariat in Lokoja, where the hints were dropped, was a beehive of activities as top officials from the commission's national office brainstormed with the leaders and governorship candidates of the various parties and members of the public to reflect on the past, identify trouble spots, discuss and proffer solutions.

According to the commission's zonal chairman for North Central Zone, Chief Satley Daze, the new measures were part of the holistic efforts to make the governorship by-election hitch-free.

At the parley were the joint candidates of the All Nigeria Peoples Parties (ANPP)/Action Congress (AC) Alliance, Prince Abubakar Audu and Senator Muhammed Ohiare and Democratic Peoples Parties (DPP's), Prof. Yusuf Obaje. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, was absent.

Iwu and Daze, with a tone of seriousness, told politicians at the talks that INEC was tired of "being called names," and was out to leave a lasting impression by conducting a free and fair by-election on March 29. They said that at the end of the exercise, "only the candidate with the highest and lawful number of votes will be declared winner."

Daze called for co-operation from the politicians and their followers so that the people of the state could witness a free and fair governorship polls. He warned that anyone, no matter how highly placed, who attempts to disrupt the process or rig the election would not be spared.

Daze acknowledged that politicians in the state, lately, had engaged themselves in pre-election violence of which the INEC headquarters had received series of petitions from Kogi and enjoined them to shun all acts that could mar the election.

He said that security agencies had been put on the alert and that INEC had adopted the policy of zero-tolerance for violence. He warned that while the commission had no role in pre-election violence, "if on election day, violence is allowed to dominate the exercise, we will not hesitate to cancel the election."

Represented by a federal commissioner in the commission, Dr. Muhammed Jumare, Iwu said that the commission in 2007 was "being called names over election (malpractice) that we are not directly responsible for."

"This time around, we have no anointed candidate at all and nobody is going to ask us to do that...the winner will really emerge as the winner, this time around, we are really going to make sure that only the winner that is declared, not anybody else", he said.

Iwu continued: "This time around, we decided that alright if you say it is all about INEC, it is INEC and INEC will do it by itself, and that is why we said we are not going to take any indigene of Kogi State as ad-hoc staff and already INEC officers from the local councils have been redeployed. Even INEC commissioner in the state has been redeployed. This is to tell people that INEC is serious. And we are all going to be here, that is why we are not going to join this by-election with any other election so that all the attention of INEC will be on (Kogi) on that very day. This time around, we are not going to tolerate any form of violence.

According to Iwu: "I expect the political parties to try and caution their candidates and of course their supporters that we are going into a game and we have to behave like true sportsmen. We are all players and in any game there must be a winner and there must be a loser. We don't want to see people in Kogi kill themselves because of a position, or in such a way that the election is one that somebody must win at all costs, even though it means killing people. This has to stop."

He assured that voters yet to get the permanent voter card would be eligible to vote using the temporary card. He also said that the on-going registration of voters who have attained voting age would continue until the time of election.

Meanwhile, all candidates for the election have been asked to report to the INEC's headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday, next week to sign an undertaking that their followers will not engage in violence during the election following complaints by some candidates that the PDP, with the support of the police commissioner, was sponsoring thugs to intimidate opponents.