A well known constitutional lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Professor Itse Sagay, has dismissed reports that the 2011 elections were credible, free and fair.
A well known constitutional lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Professor Itse Sagay, has dismissed reports that the 2011 elections were credible, free and fair.
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He also rejected the reports of both local and foreign electoral observers, declaring that there were no real elections in the South East and South-South geopolitical zones of the country.
Speaking yesterday at the University of Lagos, Faculty of Law Roundtable Series on the 2011 Election: Implications for Development and Citizens Participation”, Prof. Sagay asserted that the elections in the two zones were marred by multiple registration, gross irregularities and monumental fraud.
He cited the huge disparities between the ballots of the Peoples Democratic Party and other parties that contested in the 2011 elections, pointing out that President Jonathan had millions of votes as compared to the governors who in the same states had only a few thousand votes.
"The international observers have misled us, the media has misled us,” he said. In his view, “That is where Goodluck Jonathan is going to have a problem at the election tribunal.”
Sagay, whose presentation was on “2011 Elections, Sovereign National Conference and Minority Rights,” said the elections were better than what they were under former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Maurice Iwu, but that they would have been better still if INEC had resolved the massive registration failure which preceded the elections.
He said if he were Prof. Attahiru Jega, the current chairman of INEC, he would have cancelled the results of the elections in the two zones as they were "manufactured overnight.”
Prof. Sagay drew particular attention to the elections in Delta and Akwa Ibom States, describing them as “crooked.” He was of the view that Prof. Jega should also have handled the elections in the same way he did Imo State: cancelling them in order not to reward the riggers.
Sagay described Jega as an honest but “terribly naïve” man who lacks courage in the discharge of his office. “He should stop deceiving himself because there was no correlation between the figures of the presidential and gubernatorial elections in the South East and South -outh like the figures declared in the South West and the North where elections actually took place," he said.
SaharaReporters has consistently reported on the manipulation of the elections in several states, pointing out how the desired results in those states were achieved.
Similarly, the United States warned two weeks ago that the presidential election was “far from perfect.”
In a statement congratulating President Jonathan on his election, the US said, “We urge the Independent National Electoral Commission to transparently review and take appropriate and transparent action on all allegations of "under-age" voters, violence and intimidation, ballot stuffing, and inordinately high turnout in some areas of the country.”
The statement was signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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