ADC Petitions INEC's Development Partners, Renews Call For Amupitan's Resignation
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has escalated the call for the resignation of the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Joash Amupitan to the Commission’s foreign development partners.
The foreign development partners provide funding and technical assistance for certain critical operations of the Nigerian electoral body in pre and post election periods.
Such assistance includes plugging budgetary shortfalls, or for urgent unanticipated needs where no budgetary outlays have been made by the Commission.
Primarily, the assistance is usually rendered through co-sponsoring of programmes, to augment INEC’s statutory allocation.
INEC has over the years, leveraged the interventions of the development partners at every election cycle to aid it in conducting free, fair and credible polls.
The areas of assistance include engaging consultants who advise the Commission on voter registration, voter education, media work, transmission of results and election management.
It also includes support for training of regular and as hoc staff, workshops and experience sharing. These interventions are geared towards strengthening of institutions and diffusion of democratic principles within a framework of mutual respect, harmony and co-responsibility.
INEC’s key foreign development partners that the ADC is reaching out to include the United States Embassy, the British High Commission, the Canadian High Commission, the
Japanese Embassy and South Korean Embassy.
Others include the Joint Donor Basket Fund/UNDP, the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, the World Bank, Department for International Development (DFID), the
European Union (EU) and the European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES).
Also in collaboration with INEC are the African Union Commission (AUC), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),
Association of African Election Authorities (AAEA), the Institute for African Renaissance Studies (UNISA), and the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA).
Similarly, the Ford Foundation, the Mac Arthur Foundation, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES),
International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES), International Republic Institute (IRI), International IDEA, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and DAI Global Belgium SRL also provide support for INEC.
The leadership of the ADC is seeking the intervention of the development partners to prevail on Amupitan to resign.
The party and other opposition groups have been calling for the chairman’s resignation, accusing him of partisanship and bias towards the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The ADC National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, confirmed THE WHISTLER‘s report in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Thursday.
“Yes, I am confirming to you that we have been contacting INEC’s foreign funders and we are still contacting many of them.
“Of course we are reaching out to them to let them know that INEC is gradually becoming a rogue organisation,” Abdullahi told our correspondent on the telephone.
The ADC spokesman restated the party’s position that the electoral body under Amupitan cannot be trusted to conduct free, fair and credible elections.
Source: THE WHISTLER
