Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has said that the legislature is committed to free, fair and credible elections in 2019, and decried that the federal government (FG) is treating the 2019 elections as an emergency.
Okay Nigeria (okay) reports Dogara stated this during a meeting of the leadership of both chambers of the National Assembly with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu.
The Speaker, who acknowledged gains recorded during the last election cycle in 2015, urged the electoral umpire to ensure that standards are improved upon.
“I want to reiterate that we are committed to an electoral process that will better our experiences of our 2015 general elections. We’ve already set a standard where the world has avowed our electoral process to be fair to a certain degree and we must not go below that standard,” Dogara stated.
He pledged the commitment of the National Assembly to enabling INEC to achieve this goal through appropriation.
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The Speaker further expressed concerns about what he described an emergency approach being taken towards the 2019 elections.
“As leaders of the National Assembly, we are committed to appropriating whatever is needed within the confines of the resources of the nation for INEC to be able to actualise this and that is why this meeting is important.
“However, personally, I have some questions that I intend to raise, but I will raise these in the process of discussion because it appears that we are treating this 2019 election as an emergency, which it ought not to be, so that is just my concern,” said Dogara.
The INEC chairman Professor Yakubu, on his part, thanked the leadership of the National Assembly for their continued support.
“Let me, on behalf of the commission, thank your excellencies and the leadership of the National Assembly for this meeting. We are now reenergised and more reassured that our plans for the 2019 general elections are absolutely on course as far as funding is concerned,” he said.
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He, however, stressed the need to act quickly, especially as elections are “exactly a hundred and ninety-one days away”.
