State Electoral Commissions Are Governors’ Rigging Tool – El-Rufai

Immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai has described the various state electoral commissions as rigging tools of state governors.

El-Rufai stated this on Monday in Maiduguri , in his lead paper presentation titled: “Capacity Building Workshop on Enhancing Skills of Government Officials In Policy Implementation and Productive Human Resources Management”.

He recalled the success recorded through electronic voting for local government areas elections he conducted during his tenure as governor, and narrated how a northwest state governor wanted to use his pattern, but after availing him of the technique used in conducting the elections, he went back to his state and wrote results of the local government elections he conducted instead of conducting it electronically.
The former governor of Kaduna State said he is in total support of abolishing state electoral commissions so that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could handle all local government elections.

“While I was the Governor of Kaduna State, I introduced electronic voting and conducted local government elections with it. After the election, we lost about three to four local government areas to the opposition, because of the credibility of the election.
And because we were transparent in the election, some of those opposition candidates decamped to our party because of our fairness in the election.

“I remember that one governor from the northwest who loved the conduct of the election through electronic voting asked me to assist him with the technology I used in the election, but because it has the state logo, I told him that it would not cost more than 10,000 US dollars, so that he can get the equipment to conduct his state LGA election electronically. But after that conversation, I did not hear from him again, he went back home and conducted his election by writing the results as usual,” he said.

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On the demolition exercise in Kaduna during his administration, El-Rufai said prior to assumption of office, the people knew who he was, and that he was very careful at ensuring that every demolition followed due process, hence there was no record of a court case after the exercise.