APC did a complete infiltration of all our institutions, including INEC, yes, INEC. Do you think elections can be rigged if majority of INEC staff (direct & adhoc) are neutral? The answer is ‘NO.’
Nnamdi Ibezim, founder of Reportera News, has issued a stern warning to Nigerians, urging them to prepare for tougher times under the current administration of Chief Bola Tinubu.
In a write-up titled “Brace Up & Get Ready For Impact; Tinubu Yet To Unleash Package,” Ibezim highlighted the growing insecurity in the country and alleged that the government’s recruitment practices have compromised key institutions.
Citing a report by socio-political risk consultancy firm, SBM Intelligence, Ibezim noted that since 2019, there have been 735 mass abductions in Nigeria. Between July 2022 and June 2023, 3,620 individuals were kidnapped, with about 5 billion Naira paid in ransom.
He claimed that these figures point to a weakening security structure, which he attributes to the influence of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the recruitment processes of the police, military, and other government agencies.
His words, “Since 2019, there have been 735 mass abductions in Nigeria, according to socio-political risk consultancy firm, SBM Intelligence. It said between July 2022 and June 2023, 3,620 people were abducted in 582 kidnapping cases with about 5 billion Naira paid in ransoms. This year alone SBM Intelligence said there have already been 68 mass abductions.
“The excerpt above is from an Aljazeera report on the state of kidnappings in Nigeria.
“The Nigeria Police, Army and other Military/Para-Military institutions in Nigeria have never been this ineffective & inefficient since their formation. Banditry and terrorism are at an all time high, the nation is rife and riddled with kidnappings and all forms of vices, and still, the government appears to be clueless on how to tackle and mitigate insecurity.
“I’ll tell you why. It’s a simple and straightforward answer – They are now affiliates of APC.
“You may wonder how this validates my hypothesis. How did this happen?
“The Buhari’s APC administration hijacked the recruitment programs of these institutions. Positions in these institutions became rewards for party loyalists and their children. Before APC, enlistment into these institutions was fairly based on merit. The government controlled a significant stake in the recruitment but ordinary citizens and people from opposition stood a better chance of getting enlisted (if they met the criteria) than what has been obtainable since the advent of APC. Senior officers who prior to APC had no political leanings (or at least made it obvious) were made to conform to their whims & caprices or face consequences like stagnation (not getting promoted when due) or even dismissal or early retirement. This continuous enlistment of party loyalists instead of qualified candidates into the country’s armed forces has inadvertently rendered the security architecture of the country technically ineffective & utterly inefficient.
“This endemic practise isn’t exclusive to the security institutions; government parastatals like NNPC, DPR, FIRS have also suffered the same fate.
“If you walk into the DPR headquarters or the NNPC towers in Abuja, you’re more likely to see nine persons clothed in Senegalese attire or Hijab before sighting one person wearing a suit or an Isiagu attire.
“APC ruined Nigeria in ways that the ordinary mind cannot imagine. They did a complete infiltration of all our institutions, including INEC, yes, INEC. Do you think elections can be rigged if majority of INEC staff (direct & adhoc) are neutral? The answer is ‘NO’. INEC has consistently recruited APC party faithfuls to work as full time staff or as adhoc staff during elections, thus making it almost impossible to have an election result that represents the will of the electorate.
“Something significant happened prior to the election that managed to go under the radar but would later become a major reason for APC’s ‘victory’ in the 2023 presidential elections – 5 months to the presidential election, the INEC Director for ICT for over 10 years, Engineer Chidi Nwafor who oversaw all the electronic reforms in INEC that brought forth Card Reader, BVA, IREV etc. was abruptly removed from office and sent to Enugu as the state’s ‘Executive Secretary’.
“I don’t have to tell you why this was done. Your guess is as good as mine.
Sometime last year, I uncovered an old tweet of the Publicity Secretary to the INEC Chairman Yakubu Mahmood which alluded that Lagos belongs to Yorubas alone, a statement that has been echoed almost exclusively from South West APC members – He quickly deleted the Tweet after I outed him. I am not categorically saying that the Publicity Secretary to the INEC Chairman is a member of the APC, but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Right?
“We are about to witness even more under this regime. For starters, the current leadership has broken a long standing rule for compulsory retirements of police IGs. Since the formation of the Nigeria Police, all IGs retired immediately they turned 60, but not the current one, Kayode Egbetokun – The National Assembly passed a bill sent directly from the presidency that allows the current IG serve a 4 year term, even after turning 60. This is a clear breach of the civil service code.
“This is just the first of many laws that will be made redundant under this regime; there’s more where that came from, so brace up and get ready for impact,” he concluded.
Follow the Parallel Facts channel on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaCQSAoHgZWiDjR3Kn2E
