The NLC President, Mr. Ayuba Wabba, made the call on Sunday in Abuja while reacting to reports that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on Saturday rescheduled the Presidential and National Assembly elections by one week.
According to him, the Nigerian Labour Congress joins other Nigerians in expressing shock at the last minute postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled to hold on Saturday, February 16, 2019.
“We share in the pains of those who in an uncommon show of patriotism, had to travel long distances to perform their civic duty. We similarly understand the outrage of those, who had incurred huge and unquantifiable logistic costs,’’ he said.
He said that there would be no explanation that would be good enough for the shifts given INEC’s repeated assurances and the zeal of Nigerians to cast their votes.
“However, given the fact that had the election taken place, a huge number of Nigerians would have been disenfranchised on account of gross and wide-spread logistic deficit, the postponement, as painful as it is, is a lesser evil of the two.
“In light of this, we enjoin all Nigerians to quickly put behind them, this ugly incident and brace up for the rescheduled election next weekend,” he said.
Wabba therefore, called on all Nigerians to self-mobilise on the same scale that they did the previous weekend to ensure that they cast their votes.
He also called on Nigerians not be disillusioned or react to the postponement in a manner that would create voter-apathy.
”As this will certainly be counter productive and will in the long run work against the interests of the electorate.
“We call on institutions to be flexible with their staff to enable them travel in good time to perform this important civic duty even if it means government declaring a day or two public holiday to achieve this.
“As for INEC, we do hope they have learnt their lessons. On no account ever again, should they allow this to happen. All effort and expertise must be deployed by INEC to guarantee free, fair and credible elections,” he added.
Wabba, however, appealed to Nigerians to put the incident behind them and go out en mass to vote next weekend.