Lagos lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN) has described the threat by the Nigeria military that its men and officers would not be available for the elections, originally scheduled for February 14 and 28 respectively as a result of which they were shifted to March 28 and April 11 as an act of mutiny.
In a statement in Lagos today, Falana said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should have called the bluff of security chiefs and proceeded with the February 14 presidential election, even as he said that by saying that they would not provide security in aid of civil authorities pursuant to section 217 of the Constitution, the security chiefs have committed the offence of mutiny contrary to section 52 of the Armed Forces Act.
according to him, also by causing the election to be postponed, the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the security chiefs had staged a coup against the constitution.
“They are liable to be prosecuted for the grave offence of treason at the appropriate time,” he added.
He also said that INEC misconstrued section 25 of the Electoral Act when it relied on it to postpone the election, adding: “the reliance on section 25 of the Electoral Act by Professor Attahiru Jega, the INEC chairman is totally misleading.”
According to him, the provision does not support the postponement of a general election in the entire country but “in the area or areas” where there is violence or actual threat of a breakdown of law and order.
“Since the reason for the postponement of any election must be “cogent and verifiable” it is crystal clear from the press conference addressed by Jega last night that INEC did not verify the bogus claim of the NSA and the security chiefs as required by the law.”
Falana said that contrary to the mistaken belief of the INEC leadership, the armed forces had no role to play in the electoral process.
He cited a judgment delivered last week by a Federal High Court sitting in Sokoto where the court declared illegal and unconstitutional the involvement of soldiers in election duties.
The judgment, he said, was binding on all authorities and persons in Nigeria.
He described as blackmail, the letter written to INEC by the National Security Adviser to the President, to the effect that the armed forces could not provide security for the election because of the operations in the north-east region. [myad]
Sir, unfortunately, this is how low our military has decended our country to. It is ridiculous for INEC to rely on such threat by the army chiefs. If truly Jega isn’t part of the plot they should have gone ahead with the elections and let the military abdicate on their responsibility if at all we needed them during the period. He Jega had compromised in 2011 cos the elections were massively rigged at INEC.
Banks and many other institutions still operate except in the insurgents infested councils. My take is to conduct elections except in the councils or states where military operations is ongoing or under the threat of insurgents and do theirs in the 6 weeks extended period. It’s a shame on Jega as all the people he relied on to cancel the elections are not independent but rather working for Jonathan even when 21 of his commissioners are for non-postponement, those are the people he should have based his decision on. Secondly, are we deploying ALL of Nigerian troops to the few councils to fight? Again, implication of what the army chiefs said is that, should any threat not of Boko Haram happen from 14 February 2015 to 27 March they’ll not be able respond to it because they are concentrating on Boko Haram alone. What a tragedy! It’s time for those with other abode outside of latitude 14 degrees to think deeply. My opinion is that Jonathan and his cohorts (militants, Mua’zu, nsa, ffk, Akpabio, Clark, Atedo peterside, Ngozi, jerry gana, et al) are working on Nigeria’s disintegration no matter what anybody says. Jonathan will be Nigeria’s last president that’s the calculation and such fears have been written in open letters to the President. It’s simple and written all over, otherwise why loot over N30 trillion in a short period and another N6.87 trillion yearly. These are huge huge sums of money. They have established “private armies” have warships in their positions and an army that have submitted fully to the whims of the militants all under the supervision of President Jonathan. My very believe is, that is the LONE agenda he came to power with. All his actions converge in that direction. The “privilege” extended to Boko haram for over 3 yrs and to their known sponsors under this government is worrisome to us and rest of the world. The world has left us to our faith and the choice resides with us the people. Many amongst his cohorts have voiced disintegration severally. We may stop or slow down on his one point agenda at least by voting him out on Election Day and ensure handover is done on May 29.