"President Has Become INEC Spokesperson, Nigeria Is in Trouble," Okonkwo said.

 

President Bola Tinubu has come under fire from Nollywood actor and African Democratic Congress (ADC) leader Kenneth Okonkwo for maintaining the impartiality of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

He claims that the election commission has not done enough to persuade Nigerians of its objectivity.

According to KohlorsMedia, Okonkwo's remarks came after Tinubu recently defended the electoral commission in front of members of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria at the State House in Abuja.

Concerns over INEC's impartiality were disregarded by the President, who met with the bishops on Tuesday under the leadership of their President, Most Rev. Matthew Ndagoso, and insisted that the commission remained independent.

Those who doubted the legitimacy of the electoral body, according to Tinubu, were "afraid of their own shadows."

But in an interview with Channels Television's Sunrise Daily on Friday, Okonkwo criticized the President for standing up for INEC rather than letting the body address concerns about its actions.

It is really depressing. He declared, "Any nation with a president who has turned into INEC's main speaker is in trouble."

Okonkwo maintained that INEC still needed to resolve a number of issues, especially those related to the way the general election in 2023 was conducted.

He questioned why, given that the electoral body had not yet adequately addressed some of the issues surrounding the previous general election, the President was reassuring Nigerians of the commission's impartiality.

You can picture President Tinubu declaring INEC's neutrality to the entire globe. The same Tinubu who declared during the 2015 campaign that if INEC manipulated the election, they would form a parallel government, according to Okonkwo.

"The same people who used to criticize INEC are now claiming that INEC is neutral," he continued. It is not possible for an INEC to be deemed unbiased after recording a technological error in 2023 and failing to provide Nigerians with a satisfactory explanation. As of right now, INEC is not neutral, despite our calls for it to be.

In addition to criticizing the Tinubu administration's performance, the ADC chieftain is a spokesperson for former vice president Atiku Abubakar's 2027 presidential campaign.

He asserted that the President's prospects of winning a second term might be impacted by the government's performance in areas like governance and security.

Okonkwo suggested that Tinubu not run for reelection in 2027, arguing that the President ought to step down after serving out his first term.

He declared, "Tinubu should quit and retire in peace; he should not even allow the election to place."

In response to the recent Court of Appeal verdict that reversed a previous decision ordering INEC to deregister the ADC and four other political parties, Okonkwo stated that the party had successfully fended off attempts to exclude it from the political arena.

According to Okonkwo, the Court of Appeal's ruling showed that the party may survive legal attacks meant to undermine or destroy it before the 2027 elections.

"I had boasted that ADC has no legal challenges because we are aware that the only one is the APC's attempt to utilize certain judicial tools to sue us out of existence. They are faltering and collapsing like a deck of cards because we resisted them," he remarked.

In addition, Okonkwo said that the ruling All Progressives Congress was weakening opposition parties in front of the 2027 general elections by employing various tactics to undermine democratic competition.

He claimed that the ruling party was trying to limit opposition parties' capacity to successfully organize and compete.

The APC is "a disease" on Nigerian democracy, according to the ADC chieftain.

He insisted that opposition parties will keep opposing what he called attempts to reduce political competition and deny Nigerians more options during elections.