Bishop Isaac Idahosa, the 2023 Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), says the appropriate punishment should be meted out to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and public officials for electoral failures.
According to the ally of former Kano governor and the 2023 NNPP presidential candidate Rabiu Kwankwaso, once there are no consequences for actions and inactions that are short of acceptable standards, such misconduct will persist.
“We don’t punish anybody for what he does; there are no consequences, so he keeps on repeating it,” the cleric said on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme on Wednesday.
“INEC does this, and nobody puts them to check, and then it repeats it. Once there are no consequences for your actions or inactions, then a repeat will occur because there is no accountability.”
The electoral umpire INEC introduced its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) for the 2023 general elections, but many politicians faulted the efficiency of the two technologies during the polls with INEC citing technical glitches for the tackiness.
In the last election, Kwankwaso, alongside his running mate Idahosa, finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes while Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) got 8,794,726 votes followed by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) who scored 6,101,533 votes.
The election results were challenged up to the Supreme Court, but the apex court ruled that the unavailability of results on IReV was not grounds for nullification of the poll.
Furthermore, Idahosa lamented that some persons in government have become more powerful than institutions, and this continues to affect governance in the country. “Money politicking has taken over the system,” he added.
The NNPP chieftain said all elections should be regularised and conducted on the same day for transparency.
He said, “I will want to suggest where all elections are done on the same day. That will help curb a whole lot of things – presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, all on the same day. It will cut costs and will get the desirable results. But when you have this in a span of one or two weeks after the presidential, a whole lot can go, bandwagon can go.”
Idahosa also said he is still close to Kwankwaso and that the former Kano governor remained the leader of the NNPP.
“To begin with, I’m still very close to my principal; he was here last week – the 8th of February when I celebrated my 60th birthday. So we are still very in touch, we are very close. No crisis in our party, he’s still our national leader, His Excellency Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
“We don’t have factions; those so-called factions have been expelled from the party. There is no room to emphasise factions in our party – we just got one party headed and being led by His Excellency, Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso,” he said.