‘Political Thugs Apply For Kaduna LG Council Observers’ – Election Monitor, Peter Abdul

Ahead of the Local Government Council election slated for December 01 2012 in Kaduna State by Kaduna State Independent Electoral Commission (KASIEC), an alert has been sounded that some of the observer groups who applied for accreditation through KASIEC are thugs being sponsored by politicians to distrupt the election.

This was revealed by Dr. Peter Abdul of the Election Integrity Forum (EIF), University of Jos.

Dr Abdul stated: “Since the series of governorship election conducted by the INEC, a group of political thugs led by a popular politician has been going round the country during the elections masquerading as election observers, whereas investigation confirmed that they are hired political thugs.’

Continuing Dr Abdul revealed ‘ INEC was able to contain this ugly situation by proper screening of the observer groups in elections it held . We therefore call on KASIEC to follow the INEC footstep and to put in place, a mechanism for checking the activities of these criminals.”

Abdul made this call against the backdrop of development that KASIEC has called for observer groups to apply for accreditation .

He implored KASIEC to ‘seek assistance from INEC on how to screen observer groups. Not all NGOs have technical knowlegde of election observation.’

And went on to stake his credibility that ‘Transitional Monitoring Group,
Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, Rights Monitoring Group, Independent Election Monitoring Group, Nigerian Bar Association, Transparency Centre Network and CLEEN foundation are some of credible observer groups in the country.’

Dr Abdul rounded off by calling on security agencies to ensure that fake observers are arrested and brought to book accordingly during or before the election.