Senator Adams Oshiomhole (Edo North) has issued a passionate plea to his political colleagues, urging them to stop arming unemployed youth with AK-47s to disrupt elections in the country.
The former Edo State governor made the appeal during the Senate plenary on Wednesday, October 22.
Oshiomhole also raised two key concerns regarding the electoral process -Cybersecurity and election scheduling.
He warned that Nigeria must exercise caution regarding hackers when integrating technology into elections.
The senator also stated his opposition to holding the elections for the President, the National Assembly, and state Governors on the same day.
He said: “I do not know if Mr. President will remember. I am not sure I am entitled to call the President as a witness, but just to draw your attention to what I said when we were both governors, first, the issue we must work hard to eliminate in our electoral process is violence.
“We cannot have an election that seems to be a war where young men and not so young, carry AK-47 either to chase away opponents or even to chase away the young men and women who are presiding over election or to take over coalition centers.
“On that occasion as a sitting governor, I believe Gov. Dickson was also at that meeting, I remember when I finished, I said, AK-47 is not like buying akara on the street (only big men can buy them). I remember the former governor Amaechi asking me whether I was accusing the governors.
“I think I said something close to ‘yes’ because if you ask the security agencies, they will tell you that after every election, violent crimes increase because the politicians who procured weapons for children who are hungry and pay them a little fee.
“Once the election is over, they are not able to retrieve the weapons, and the weapon are then deployed by these people for violence.
“You can see a strong correlation between the level of criminality, robbery, etc, immediately after the election, because these people have been abandoned since the results have been given, somebody said, I should not accuse governors.
“I am not accusing governors now. I am just recalling what I said before and when I listen to all those who spoke here, everybody spoke in unison, I have not heard anyone who says he does not want a transparent election.”
He added: “If we all do, not from our lips but from our heart, and we decide to remove violence and convince ourselves that the Nigerian people deserve to hire and fire without fear of favour on election day, at least after every four years, correct law. We will have free, fair, transparent elections.
“The beauty of democracy is not the fact that you find yourself occupying an important elective office.
“It is the feeling in your heart that people actually in their free will find you worthy to be their voice and to entrust our collective patrimony in your hands to manage to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number.
“That for me is the beauty. If you achieve it by the game of body, by two rigging or other manipulation, deep in your heart, you know that you are not a happy person.
“Therefore, I wish to say the following: First, we should resolve each and every one of us and also collectively, that as elected persons, we as senators, shall not directly or indirectly, secretly or openly abet unemployed people and armed them to disrupt elections if we form our character, this problem is 90 percent solved.”
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