APA – Lagos (Nigeria)
The report that amid irregularities, intimidation, voter suppression and violence that tainted the credibility of the governorship and state Assembly elections held at the weekend, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared some candidates winners of the exercise dominates the headlines of Nigerian newspapers on Monday.
The Guardian reports that amid irregularities, intimidation, voter suppression and violence that tainted the credibility of the governorship and state Assembly elections held at the weekend, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared some candidates winners of the exercise. Gruesome killings of party leaders, attacks by hoodlums and disenfranchisement of voters in many states resulted in low turnout of voters.
The Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHR), Tony Ojukwu (SAN) attributed the low turnout to intimidation. Ojukwu said that during the commission’s monitoring of the elections, there were instances of hate speeches, assaults, and extrajudicial killings.
He said: “Our monitors reported incidents of violence, including cases of assault, vandalism, destruction of election materials and polling units in 16 per cent of the polling units monitored.
“There were reports from Rivers State of hoodlums attacking the INEC officials and stealing the BVAS device and election materials. There were also reported cases of abduction of INEC officials in Isu Local Council of Imo state and attack on INEC officials in Odoakpu Ward 7, Onitsha in Anambra State.”
He promised that the alleged cases of hate speech by the governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello and MC Oluomo during the elections would not be swept under the carpet as the Commission is set to extend invitations to them for interrogation.
Governor Seyi Makinde of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was declared winner of the 2023 governorship election in Oyo State with total vote of 563,756 to defeat his major rival and candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Teslim Folarin, who polled 256,685.
Accord Party candidate, Adebayo Adelabu, who came a distant third in the contest, polled 38,357. Makinde won convincingly in 31 out of the 33 local councils, while Folarin won two. Declaring the results at the INEC office in Ibadan, yesterday, the state Returning Officer, Prof. Adebayo Bamire, said Makinde, having satisfied all the necessary requirements, is declared winner of the contest.
The Punch says that the incessant scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, vandalism of pipelines, oil theft and several other menaces in the oil and gas sector are due to the gross mismanagement of the industry by the Federal Government and politicians, the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise has said.
CPPE described the management of the oil sector by politicians as a disaster, stressing that the government should reduce its hold on the industry and privatise some facilities in it, such as the four refineries being run by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
“Let’s take the oil and gas sector, for instance, that sector has been a disaster, because it is fully in the hands of government officials and politicians,” the Director, CPPE, Muda Yusuf, told our correspondent, while speaking on the need to fully privatise the oil sector.
“Imagine if operators in that industry were private sector people, paying taxes and doing things efficiently, the sector would not be in the state it is now.
“It would have raked in a lot of investments, bringing in many foreign and domestic investors, more quality jobs would have been created, and our export earnings would have been fantastic. Our investments in gas and others would have gone far.”
Yusuf stressed that because the government was the one that was largely sitting on the affairs of the sector, it had become a platform for patronage, “which is why we are in the crisis that we face today.
It added, “Whereby every now and then we are plunged into widespread scarcity of petroleum products, oil theft, pipeline vandalism, among others.”
The CPPE boss stressed that privatisation might not be good for every sector, but noted that if the government could identify sectors where the private industry players had clear capacity to deliver, then the government had no business being there.
“This is because if they are there, they will not be efficient, there’ll be a lot of corruption, there’ll be no investments and they will mess it up.”
“All these queues we are seeing today, fuel subsidy issues and crises, as well as others, are because the place (oil sector) is in the hands of the public sector.
“The oil sector can work far better than it is currently when managed by the private sector. It will work far better. If those refineries were in private hands, would they be moribund for so many years? This government has been there for eight years, have the refineries worked?” Yusuf queried.
The newspaper reports shortage of the newly introduced N200, N500, and N1000 currency notes has left millions of Nigerians struggling to survive. The worst hit were petty traders, artisans and labourers, who relied heavily on cash for their daily business. Most of them who do not have bank accounts have seen a significant drop in patronage.
“I have not been able to buy plantains in the past month because I have not been able to access cash. Point of Sales agents charge N15,000 for every N100,000 one wants to collect from them. I do not make N15,000 profit from N100,000 worth of plantain that I buy,” a plantain trader, Dotun Omotayo, told our correspondent during a visit to Folashade Tinubu-Ojo Plantain Market in Mile 12 area of Lagos.
Kehinde Ismail, a plantain trader, lamented that sales had not been very low, forcing her to stay away from the market for some time. She returned to the market after receiving the news that the Central Bank of Nigeria had approved the recirculation of the old naira notes, she said.
She added, “I have been doing different menial jobs to feed since I have been unable to sell plantains and they got spoiled.
“Despite the announcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria that to the old notes remain legal lenders, the farmers are not collecting them, making it difficult for us to do our businesses.”
Also, Funmilayo Olanrewaju, a plantain trader, who is in her late 60s, lamented that she and her family members have had to rely on cassava flakes as meals.
According to her, the government is deliberately inflicting suffering on the traders.
She said, “This government is a government of pain. My children are hungry. What should people like me who are not literate do about the transfer issue? Most times we do not get these transfer alerts, and we end up with nothing. And due to the low patronage, because people do not have the cash to buy goods from us, we had to throw away our plantains as they rot away.”
GIK/APA