Bishop Isaac Idahosa, the New Nigeria People’s Party’s (NNPP) 2023 vice presidential candidate, has asserted that the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) and public officials should receive the proper punishment for election failures.
The NNPP chieftain stated that all elections had to be regularized and held on the same day for the sake of openness and cost savings.
He also claimed that wrongdoing will continue as long as there are no repercussions for acts or inactions that fall short of accepted norms.
“We don’t punish anybody for what he does; there are no consequences, so he keeps on repeating it.
“INEC does this, and nobody puts them to check, and then it repeats it. Once there are no consequences for your actions or inactions, then a repeat will occur because there is no accountability.” He said.
It would be recalled that in conducting the 2023 general elections, INEC, the electoral umpire, unveiled the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) and the Result Viewing Portal (IReV). However, during the polls, some politicians criticized the effectiveness of the two technologies, with INEC blaming them on technical issues.
While Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) received 8,794,726 votes, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) received 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) received 6,101,533 votes, Kwankwaso and his running mate Idahosa finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes in the most recent election.
The election results were challenged up to the Supreme Court, but the apex court ruled that the unavailability of results on IReV was not grounds for nullification of the poll.
Furthermore, Idahosa lamented that some persons in government have become more powerful than institutions, and this continues to affect governance in the country. “Money politicking has taken over the system,” he added.
He said, “I will want to suggest where all elections are done on the same day. That will help curb a whole lot of things—presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, all on the same day. It will cut costs and will get the desirable results. But when you have this in a span of one or two weeks after the presidential, a whole lot can go, a bandwagon can go.”
Idahosa also said he is still close to Kwankwaso and that the former Kano governor remained the leader of the NNPP.
