Renowned lawyer and professor of law, Francis Dike, has said the federal government should be held responsible if the 2023 general elections fail to hold in Nigeria.
Dike (SAN) made the call in an interview with LEADERSHIP in Owerri, the Imo State capital.
Reacting to the attack on the state headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Dike said, “There will be an election and if there is none, it is the fault of the federal government. It has a duty to maintain the constitutionality of the federation and the pivot is elections”.
He said irrespective of the level of attacks, elections must hold, stressing that “people should believe we’re going to have elections. This is what happened some time ago when the good ones said there might not be an election and withdrew from the political arena, and we had some ragamuffin voted in.”
The law professor lamented that the Southeast political class was unqualified, saying, “We have a situation where people are going off in all directions; it’s one of the problems in the Southeast; our society was hijacked by mediocrities politically and we are still suffering from it till today. It’s only recently that you have some people coming out with a philosophical argument.
But if you look well, it’s the dregs of the society.”.
Prof Dike said, “We may have a few we can write home about, but the others are just a gang of ragamuffins, and that has filtered into the general society. We cannot understand how some young men, we don’t know their backgrounds, education but presumably being tele-guided by some political parties, let us face it. You cannot say there will not be an election and you want to enforce it by violence. There must be an election, I think I believe that”.
According to him, representatives of the Southeast zone were not sincere. “I was counsel to the Senate president and if he tells you the class of people representing Southeast, you will cry. People who are chasing visas to travel when there are issues to be addressed.”
