Galadima: INEC chairman worse than Emefiele, he should be fired

Buba Galadima, a chieftain of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), has called on President Bola Tinubu to sack Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

He spoke in an interview on Channels TV’s Political Paradigm.

Galadima accused the INEC boss of subverting the will of Nigerians during the last presidential election.

He said what Yakubu did was worse than the “sins” of Godwin Emefiele, the embattled Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

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“The INEC chairman must go, what he did is not up to what Godwin Emefiele did. He colluded with some people to subvert the will of Nigerians. He committed the greatest crime anybody will commit,” he said.

INEC under Yakubu has been heavily criticsed over its failure to upload election results as promised, a development that the electoral body blamed on technical glitch.

At a briefing on Tuesday, the European Union Election Observation Mission said public trust in the commission had been severely damaged.

But responding, Festus Okoye, said the glitch experienced in the upload of the February 25 presidential election in the country should not write off the entire polls held nationwide.

“It is not fair to judge the entire performance of the commission on the basis of a glitch in the result upload for the presidential election,” he said.

Speaking further in the television interview, Galadima told former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi of Labour Party that they were wasting time challenging victor of President Bola Tinubu.

Obi and Atiku are in court to seek upturning of Tinubu’s victory.

But Galadima, who claimed that the elections were married with irregularities, added that the outcome of any presidential election has never been overturned by the courts since 1979.

“Which politician has succeeded in court since 1979 in Nigeria in a presidential petition case?Why waste our N10bn or 15bn because we heard some people are spending such billions now on social media at the tribunal; if we have such money we would use it to prepare for the 2027 general election.

“The NNPP is strong, we did not do well because the registration of the party came late, if not for INEC targeting us and our candidates names and logo was omitted in some states, we could have performed better,” he said.