Two weeks after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as President-elect, a group – Kogi Women Forum (KWF) – comprising women across the three senatorial districts of Kogi State, has sought the cancellation of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.
KWF at a press conference in Lokoja hinged their reasons for the call on the “chaos, brigandage, wide spread violence, bloodletting and even deaths” that characterised the election.
Esther Opaluwa, who addressed journalists on behalf of the women group, stated that the February 25 election date, which was supposed to be the beginning of another democratic dispensation in Nigeria, in which everyone including youths and women eagerly hoped to breath air of freedom, turned out the opposite.
“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 mark 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,” she said.
She continued: “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 sanitise our electoral processes.”
“But the day, February 25, 2023 ended in chaos, brigandage, wide spread violence, bloodletting and even deaths.
“As we lament and mourn over what had happened during the day at almost all the polling stations, our traumatised 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, the security chiefs and even the umpire of the electoral processes had been assuring us will happen,” KWF said.
Therefore, they said: “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.”
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 want to win at all cost and resorted to ballot box-snatching.
“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 group added.
KWF also demanded compensation for the families that were bereaved or injured in the course of carrying out their civic responsibilities and right to vote to elect their preferred leaders but were disenfranchised, bruised, battered, and even killed.