The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has appointed Mrs. Amina Zakari as head of the agency’s collation centre committee for the 2019 presidential election.
Zakari is widely believed to be President Muhammadu Buhari’s niece.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday rejected the appointment of Zakari who had been INEC’s national commissioner in charge of welfare and health.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja, the party said the appointment would compromise the presidential election, particularly on account of “her blood relationship” with Buhari who is a candidate in the poll.
PDP’s national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, described the appointment as a step towards destroying the future of democracy in Nigeria.
INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had earlier, yesterday, announced that Zakari would chair the committee.
“Today, we have been informed that the chairman of INEC, apparently in furtherance of the plots to rig the presidential election, has appointed Mrs. Amina Zakari, a blood relation (niece) of the APC candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, as the chairperson of INEC advisory committee and presidential election collation centre committee.
“The PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation (PPCO) vehemently and unequivocally rejects, in its entirety, the appointment of Mrs. Amina Zakari, President Buhari’s blood relation, as the head of the collation of results, in the same election in which her uncle, President Buhari, as a candidate, has displayed a huge desperation to win,” the PDP said.
“The appointment of Mrs. Amina Zakari, who had been openly accused in various quarters as being the link person between INEC and the Buhari presidency in their schemes to rig the election for President Buhari, constitutes a direct violence against the presidential election and the PDP will not, in any way, whatsoever, accept it.”
Recall that last month, the PDP, with a view to getting fairness at the polls, had urged INEC to grant international and local observers access to its situation room during the elections.
It said the call became imperative because of Buhari’s refusal to assent to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill and alleged manipulations during the Osun State gubernatorial poll.
Also, a pro-democracy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), condemned INEC’s move, saying: “What has happened today, with the ill-advised decision of Yakubu Mahmood to give the most sensitive appointment to the biological blood sibling of a major contender in the same electoral contest, is the electoral equivalent of match-fixing.”
