The leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Sunday urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to put necessary machineries in place for the conduct of credible, free and fair presidential and national assembly elections, rescheduled for the 23rd February, 2019.
The congress, through its president, Ayuba Wabba, warned the commission not to allow such national embarrassment to re-occur, and stressed the need for Nigerians to put the sad incident behind them and perform their civic responsibilities in the rescheduled elections.
“We at the Nigerian Labour Congress join other Nigerians in expressing our shock at the last-minute postponement of the presidential and national assembly elections scheduled to hold on Saturday, February 16, 2019.
“We share in the pains of those who in an uncommon show of patriotism, had to travel long distances to perform their civic duty.
“We similarly understand the outrage of those who had incurred huge and unquantifiable logistic costs.
“No explanation will be good enough given INEC’s repeated assurances and the zeal of Nigerians to cast their vote.
“However, given the fact that had the election taken place, a huge number of Nigerians would have been disenfranchised on account of gross and wide-spread logistic deficit, the postponement, as painful as it is, is a lesser evil of the two.
“In light of this, we enjoin all Nigerians to quickly put behind them this ugly incident and brace up for the rescheduled election next weekend.
“In spite of huge costs to them, we call on all Nigerians to self-mobilise on the same scale that they did the previous weekend.
“Let them not be disillusioned or react to this postponement in a manner that will create voter-apathy. This will certainly be counter-productive and will in the long run work against the interests of the electorate.
“We call on institutions to be flexible with their staff to enable them travel in good time to perform this important civic duty even if it means government declaring a day or two public holidays to achieve this.
“As for INEC, we do hope they have learnt their lesson. On no account ever again, should they allow this to happen. All effort and expertise must be deployed by INEC to guarantee free, fair and credible elections.
“Finally, once again, we appeal to all Nigerians to put this incident behind them and go out en-mass to vote next weekend,” Wabba urged.
