PRESS RELEASE
August 25, 2008
DPA PROTESTS LASIEC’S ALTERING OF TIMETABLE FOR COUNCIL POLLS
The Democratic Peoples’ Alliance (DPA) has accused the Action Congress
(AC) and the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC) of
laying the groundwork for rigging the council polls through the agency’s
recent tinkering with the election timetable.
LASIEC, which had given the parties up to August 24 to conduct primaries,
suddenly announced that it has shifted the deadline to September 6.
Describing the rescheduling as immoral, chauvinistic, unwarranted and
provocative, DPA said LASIEC must revert to the original timetable as the
Commission had failed to consult or carry stakeholders along in arriving
at the new timing. The party said the electoral agency had robbed other
parties of a level playing field.
In a statement by its Director of Publicity, Felix Oboagwina, Lagos DPA
said it suspected the new arrangement aimed at satisfying the Action
Congress (AC), ruling party in Lagos, which had originally slated its
primaries for August 23, but shifted it at the weekend to September 6. DPA
had earlier fixed its own primaries for August 24.
“We are once more witnessing the depriving of the opposition of a level
playing field, just as happened in the 2007 governorship elections,” DPA
said.
Although the Commission said it altered the timetable in line with
parties’ demand, DPA said, “We made no such request to LASIEC. They
gave us a timetable that guided our own internal arrangements, and now
they suddenly came up to scatter things. This is foul-play, tantamount to
shifting the goalpost after the goal had been scored. All the parties,
except perhaps AC, were comfortable with the former timetable and were
working towards conforming. Clearly, by this alteration, LASIEC is wholly
and only playing the AC script.”
The party expressed fears that LASIEC by the shift was pandering to the
ruling Action Congress (AC).
“It has all the trappings of working towards a preordained answer,”
DPA said. “LASIEC has demonstrated that AC is the piper that must
dictate the tune, the tone and the tempo of elections in Lagos State.
Furthermore, LASIEC is showing that it will tilt the playing field to suit
AC.”
According to DPA, Lagosians knew that AC shifted its primaries to the end
of the electoral process as a strategy for preventing aggrieved members
from defecting and carpet-crossing at the last minute to other parties,
something the party said was inevitable because of AC’s refusal to
practise internal democracy.
DPA warned the Justice Abdul-Fatai Adeyinka-led LASIEC not to allow AC to
compromise the integrity of the Commission, the election and the electoral
process.
“Coming so early after the AC leadership’s vow to impose sole
administrators on councils where anointed candidates failed to make the
primaries or elections, this timetable amendment is one step too many in
AC’s growing culture of impunity; and we will not stomach it,” DPA’s
statement said.
FELIX OBOAGWINA
Director of Publicity, Lagos DPA
08033327355.