Olu Samuel, Lokoja

A Non governmental,non profit making organisation, RUKOF Foundation has called for the ouright cancellation of the February 25th presidential and National Assembly Election that produced Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President elect.

The organization which pride itself as catererers wellbeing of widows, the girl child and single mothers in Kogi state in a press conference on Monday in Lokoja hinged their reasons for the call on the “chaos, brigandage, wide spread violence, bloodlets and even deaths that chacterised the election.

Esther Opaluwa who addressed Newsmen on behalf of the group stated that the February 25th Election date which was supposed to be the beginning of another democratic dispensation in our country in which everyone including our youth and women eagerly hoped to breathe air of freedom turned out to be the opposite participated in all the activities that led to that date.

“As you are all aware a significant date in the history of Nigeria just passed, a date that has become a watershed in the democratic story of Nigeria.
Indeed 25th of February 2023 was a date all Nigerians home and abroad waited for with baited breath, for it was date that will make the beginning of another democratic dispensation in our country and everyone including our youth and women eagerly participated in all the activities that led to that date”.

According to her,”it was a day when the INEC chairman Prof Mahmoud Yakubu had assured Nigerians severally of their preparedness for this fateful day backed with the latest technology, funding and the necessary laws (electoral act 2022) to take our electoral processes to the next level. We even endured the sufferings the currency redesigned policy inflicted on us all in a bid to sanitize our electoral processes”.

“But the day – 25th of February 2023 ended in chaos, brigandage, wide spread violence, bloodlets and even deaths.
As we lament and mourn over what had happened during the day at almost all the Polling stations, our traumatized sensibilities was further damaged with what we were seeing right there on the screens of our televisions which was quite the opposite of what the Federal Government and our president Mohammadu Buhari, The NASS, The Security Chiefs and even the Unpire of the electoral processes had been assuring us will happen”.

The organization therefore demanded
that “what happened on the 25th of February which the inec called election be cancelled, declared null and void and a rerun be organised asap.”

RUKOF also want all the perpetrators of violence around kogi state especially in the Central and Eastern axis who were arrested be brought to justice and be made to pay for the lives they wasted in the course of carrying out the orders of desperate politicians who wants to win at all cost and resorted to ballot box snatching .

Also “a searchlight be beamed on the activities of the agencies of the government of kogi state with a view to bringing all those that used their official capacities to thwart the will of the people especially the Local Government Chairmen in the state with a view to bringing them to justice.”
The organization also wants the state Governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello to understand that he is not ONLY the leader of his political party as Governor of the state but the CHEIF SECURITY OFFICER of the state in whose hands our safety was entrusted at all times but this he had abdicated in his quest to ensure victory for his party”.

The organization also wants the Families who were bereaved or injured in the course of carrying out their civic responsibility and right to vote to elect their preferred leaders but were disenfranchised, bruised battered and even killed be compensated.