Ahead of the March 9 governorship and state assembly elections, women groups on Wednesday warned against militarization of the exercise.
The women who protested at the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Maitama-Abuja, on the auspices of Save Democracy Women, also cautioned that the election must not be postponed.
Led by May Uneku, Convener, Impact Future Nigeria, the women carried placards with various inscriptions to press home their demands.
Some of the placards read: ‘Nepotism must stop’, ‘Restore our stolen mandate’, ‘No place for tyranny in modern democracy’, ‘Save our democracy’, ‘Black cloud over Nigeria’, ‘Let our votes count’, ‘Steal our votes, steal our future’, ‘INEC secure our husbands’ among others.
The protest comes a day after the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), protested at the headquarters of the electoral body, rejecting the results of the just concluded presidential election.
While stressing that the police remains the lead agency for election security and calling on the army to steer clear of Polling Units, Uneku attributed the low voters turnout in some parts of the country in the February 23 election to high presence of the military.
She said: “Unfortunately, these military men helped President Buhari to rig the presidential election for him to come back.
“We condemn in totality the involvement of military in our elections. During the just concluded elections, people were killed. The election was a total charade because they were video and pictorial evidence of people screaming for their lives, soldiers were harassing and shooting people.
“In 2015, there were court judgements in Abuja, Sokoto and Lagos – two federal high court judgements and one Court of Appeal judgement – against the involvement of the military that the President had no powers to involve the military in the elections.
“But few days to the 2019 elections, the President categorically said the military should shoot anybody that will pick ballot boxes. Though we are not supporting those who will snatch ballot boxes but that pronouncement caused a lot of rancour as military men harassed, intimidated voters”.
They also presented a petition to the Commission.
In the petition seen by BusinessDay, the group alleged that the February 23 Presidential and National Assembly election was characterised by violence, arson, harassment, intimidation and vandalism.
It listed incidences of military personnel deployment and intimidation by political thugs in various states that led to loss of lives in the last election to include: Rivers, Lagos, Kogi, Delta, Bayelsa among others.
The document reads in part: “The recently concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections, February 23, 2019, witnessed a proliferation in state-sponsored violent attacks on citizens and the systematic intimidation of opposition led Governments at the state and local government levels to ensure ‘voter suppression’.
“ln comparison to the 2015 elections, these acts, alongside the arrest and incarceration of leading opposition figures and state-sponsored killing of innocent citizens necessitated this correspondence because our democracy is under threat”.
Speaking on behalf of the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, Assistant Director of Safety at the Commission, Kelechi Mmaduneme, commended the women for their peaceful conduct, even as he assured that the issues raised in the petition would be addressed by the electoral body.
