2019: Jega Raises The Alarm Over Danger Signs

Former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has listed some danger signs which he said can mar the 2019 general elections. Jega spoke yesterday while delivering a lecture to mark this year’s Democracy Day in Abuja.

The former INEC boss warned that violent party congresses constituted a risk to the elections and argued that if the parties could not conduct their internal elections without violence, it may have consequences on the general elections.

He also cited the increasing incidents of hate speech, which he said must be controlled through existing laws warning that it could jeopardize the exercise. He observed that the delay in the passage of the framework for the conduct of the 2019 exercise was also a risk to the election.

He said: “The first thing to consider is an electoral violence and there is no better way to address this than what happened in recent party congresses and its potential danger. “If political parties cannot organise their internal elections peacefully, how can they engage the other parties with civilities in the general elections.

“It is very important that this is addressed because if there is crisis in the elections, some of these issues are outside the scope of electoral commission but in the end it is the electoral commission that gets blamed. “So, it is very important that we improve our systemic mechanisms of addressing violence and conflicts related to elections and in particular improving the score of internal democracy within political parties.
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