Credible Polls in Nigeria Will Boost Africa’s Image, Says Kuffuor

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Elections 2011 Saturday, April 16th, 2011

“WHIFF of successful elections in Nigeria has, in fact, heightened the self-confidence of Africa because the image of Africa internationally hasn’t been too palatable. And Nigeria being the most populous country, we should see a credible presidential election this Saturday as sending messages around the world that Africa really means to serve itself well. It will be showing respect to the peoples of Africa. A successful election here will do Africa a lot of good…”

With these words at the weekend in Abuja, former President of Ghana and Head of African Union’s (AU) Observer Mission for Nigeria’s 2011 polls, Mr. John Kuffor explained the significance of Nigeria’s successful elections that enter the second phase today with a presidential election.

In an interview with The Guardian in Abuja, the former President who handed over to an opposition party that defeated his then ruling party in 2009, said the impression he had noted of the President of Nigeria about his attitude to these 2011 elections, has been quite positive.

He said: “That is the strong impression I have had of him for quite some time now. He means well for Nigerians. He said all he wanted for Nigerians is to use their votes to decide on leadership. He didn’t want manipulations for him to retain the position. For a politician to talk like that, especially in the heat of electioneering, is something quite impressive.”

On the National Assembly polls and what he expected in today’s elections, Kuffor said: “From the remarks of Ahmed (who headed the Assembly Election Group), I would wish that communities would stop under-aged people from voting. You see somebody who is not 18 years pretending to be qualified because his name is in the register, that is a crime the youths may be committing. It’s a challenge to the community, not just to INEC. That one should stop.”

He continued: “We want peaceful election. There havebeen some bombings; I want the security agencies to be more alert. By and large, we consider Nigeria a huge country. One would say that perhaps the election came up only with marginal problems but I believe that if we can even get very marginal problems, it can be very welcomed and that should impose more responsibility on the security agencies to render peaceful, credible, fair election…??”

“INEC, I believe, is also trying but in these matters, there shouldn’t be any limit to the efforts INEC should make to get the wholesome process through the presidential election,” he stressed.

On the importance of the Nigerian elections to Africa, the former Nigerian leader said: “I will expect the outcome of the Nigerian election to positively affect the processes in the other countries that are also waiting to do their elections. If you do it right, very likely everybody will try to emulate what transpired in Nigeria. If you get it wrong, then people will throw up their hands and say what do you expect of Africa?”

Earlier, Mr. Ahmed Hassan, who head the AU subgroup that observed the National Assembly Election had told The Guardian:

“We have about 40 observers from AU from 15 countries and we are in four of the six geo-political zones. Overall, we have done our reports and there are many challenges that we noticed including cases of voters’ names missing from the register. You see someone come with a voters’ card and he is not in the register. There are quite a number in many states that we went to, especially in Abuja. That was a big challenge. I think INEC has promised this time around, it is going to do something about it.”

The AU envoy, said: “But we also had cases with accreditation and voting. There were some challenges especially because we feel that during parliamentary election, the turnout was very low. We expect that the ballot will generate more interest by the time we go higher.

“The issue of accreditation and voting is going to bring a big challenge to the management of INEC. We are thinking of how they are going to control the crowd. How they are going to do the voting may bring problem. INEC is not prepared for this. Sometimes, wherever there is lateness, there was no electricity for the officers.

“More important, in Katsina, we observed under-aged voters, who had the voters’ cards and were voting. Aside from these, we have in our report that the election was transparent, credible and people were exercising their rights freely and we see that there is the will of the people reflected.”

-Guardian

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