Nigeria is in dire need of an impartial electoral umpire – Iredia

Tonnie Iredia, Professor and former Director General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) has said that Nigeria is in dire need of an impartial electoral umpire to right the wrongs in the nation’s electoral system.

He said this at the Osahon Enabulele Foundation official launch and colloquium while speaking on the topic “Election management and the leadership recruitment process : The way forward in Benin City.

Iredia said that Nigeria can’t get its electoral processes right when those saddled with the responsibility to man the process are grossly soaked in partisan politics.

“Nigeria is in dire need of an impartial electoral umpire and our constitution which gives legitimacy, according to professor Eghosa Osaghae, says, that anybody who has been partisan can’t be an electoral Commissioner and yet, they are there”, Iredia said.

Iredia, who was the lead presenter at the launch of the colloquium, said that a single faulty electoral process could ruin the chance of a supposed winner of an election even before the main election proper.

While suggesting the way out from the electoral quagmire, he said “All general elections in Nigeria should be held the same day.

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“These scattered elections are not helpful. We have seen that they are not helpful. It is time to depart from analogue, obsolete elections. If Ghana, Kenya, South Africa can do it, why can’t Nigeria do the same?

“It is time to find a situation where before somebody is sworn-in, election disputes have been settled. If you don’t do that, you are asking the person who won to use the state money to prosecute his election petition.

“It is also time for an election tribunal, that is, election offences tribunal to be brought up. So many tenses have been recommended yet, they have not come”, Iredia said.

On the part of the Keynote speaker, Eghosa Osaghae, Professor and Director General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), who spoke on the topic :”Nigeria and the leadership question: Unlocking the potential for a better tomorrow”, said that leadership problems are not peculiar to Nigeria alone but universal.

He said the solutions to the nation’s problem resides within Nigerians and they must not look elsewhere rather should look inwards and address them.

On the part of the founder of the foundation, Osahon Enabulele, said undoubtedly, most Nigerians had been plunged into a miasma of hopelessness and unfathomable depths of disillusionment, such that the first question an average Nigerian wants to ask when confronted with some life situations is “Why am I still in Nigeria? Why don’t I japa? But can everyone japa?

He said really and truly, Nigeria had virtually descended to a pitiable and worrisome situation where everyone is now virtually struggling for survival and for very basic things of life.