Jega explains why Oguta re-run polls may not hold soon

BY IKECHUKWU NNOaCHIRI

ABUJA— Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, yesterday, said the electoral body has resolved not to conduct rerun election in Oguta constituency of Imo State until it was sure that its staff would not be assaulted and there will be no violence.

Justifying why the commission declared the election that took place in the constituency on June 29 inconclusive, Jega, who spoke at the Civil Society situation room meeting on the state of the nation in Abuja, said it had become expedient for the National Assembly to okay  establishment of electoral offences commission, decrying that “Imo regrettably was a very bad election not because of what we did as a commission but because of the politicians that decided to make it bad.”

According to the INEC boss, “the procedures are clear, after every election, a return can be made or a result can be declared inconclusive if in certain polling units election could not take place for any given reason, whether it is because of violence or other electoral offences.

“When you tabulate the result and the number of people in those polling units where the election did not take place and it is more than the difference between the number one and number two candidates, you can’t declare the result, it is inconclusive until election is conducted in those places where election did not take place.

“So in Imo, there were polling units where elections did not take place largely because violence occurred, either ballot boxes were snatched or election officials were assaulted. And when we now did the tabulations, the returning officer tabulated the results and somebody had about 9, 000 plus and the second person had about 6,000 plus, then he looked at polling units where election did not take place and there were about 4,000 votes, so if you add those votes there will be difference and the law and our procedure allow that the results be declared inconclusive until we are able to go and do election in those places where election did not take place.

“If it were the other way round, that in spite of the cancelation, a clear winner emerged and even if you added the 4,000 to number two he will not still catch up with number one, then in that case a return can be made. So this is what happened in Imo and the stakeholders are grandstanding and talking but Imo regrettably was a very bad election and the  politicians decided to make it bad.

“By the way, until we did the 2011 election, no election ever took place in Oguta, everybody know that, never! They will just return results because there are power brokers there who just decide where Oguta result should be.

“But we insisted that election must take place in 2011, it took place and they went to court and kept on contesting the result. So what we did last Saturday or so, we were compelled by the court to do it. There was a court order that we must do the election at Oguta, we went to do it and they still came and subverted the process. So what we are saying is that we will do election in Imo, the people deserve a representative but we are not going to do any election there until we are sure that it will be done well and that our staff will not be assaulted and that there will not be any violence. Until they give us that guarantee, we will not go to Imo".