Women across the three Senatorial Districts of Kogi State have called for the cancellation of the February 25th presidential and National Assembly, NASS, Elections.
Spokesperson of the Forum, Esther Opaluwa in a statement yesterday in Lokoja, said “As you are all aware a significant date in the history of Nigeria just passed, a date that has become a watershed in the democratic story of Nigeria. Indeed 25th of February 2023 was a date all Nigerians home and abroad waited for with baited breath, for it was a date that would make the beginning of another democratic dispensation in our country and everyone including our youth and women eagerly participated in all the activities that led to that date.
“It was a day when the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, had assured Nigerians severally of their preparedness for this fateful day backed with the latest technology, funding and the necessary laws (Electoral Act 2022) to take our electoral processes to the next level. We even endured the sufferings the currency redesigned policy inflicted on us all in a bid to sanitize our electoral processes.
“But the day – 25th of February 2023 ended in chaos, brigandage, wide spread violence, bloodlettings and even deaths.
“As we lament and mourn over what had happened during the day at almost all the polling stations, our traumatized sensibilities were further damaged with what we were seeing right there on the screens of our televisions which was quite the opposite of what the Federal Government and our president Mohammadu Buhari, The NASS, The Security Chiefs and even the Umpire of the electoral processes had been assuring us would happen.
“Wat happened on the 25th of February which the INEC called election should be cancelled, declared null and void and a rerun be organised as soon as possible. All perpetrators of violence during the election in Kogi State, especially in the Central and Eastern axis who were arrested be brought to justice and be made to pay for the lives they wasted in the course of carrying out the orders of desperate politicians who want to win at all cost and resorted to ballot box snatching.”