Only electoral, judicial reforms can stop incessant protests, guarantee good governance -Anambra Labour Party Youth Leader-elect

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Comrade Ekene Nnadi

By Alphonsus Nweze, Onitsha

The Anambra State Labour Party Youth Leader -elect, Comrade Ekene Nnadi, has said only electoral and judicial reforms can halt incessant protests by Nigerians against bad governance.

Comrade Nnadi who was reacting to the #EndBadGovernance protest which rocked the country from Thursday August, 1, 2024, said Nigerians should begin to agitate for far-reaching electoral and judicial reforms to ensure that credible people and the choice of the masses are put into public offices.

While commending the initiators and participants in the current protest, Comrade Ekene who is also the chairman of Campaign for Democracy (CD) in Anambra State said however that ways out of the protracted protest against bad governance in Nigeria is for the masses of this country to begin to engage in struggle for the National Assembly to pass laws that will reform both the electoral and judicial processes.

He said without these two things in place, the system would continue to throw up bad leaders who would not be sensitive to yearnings and demands of the people.

Comrade Nnadi said in the case of electoral reform, the National Assembly should enact Electoral Act that would make it compulsory for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deploy technology through electronic voting in which only results obtained through I-Ref should be authentic.

He said the reformed Electoral Law should not give the election management body any room to announce any other result exceot the ones obtained electronically.

The right activist said the last electoral law was a fraud foisted on Nigerians by the National Assembly and INEC which created loophole for manual counting of vote and gave room for rigging.

He said the same thing should be applicable to judiciary, saying that until it is reformed to avoid next of kin, ethnic, religious and primordial sentiments in appointing judicial officers, credible leadership would continue to elude Nigeria.

Comrade Ekene also canvassed that all the election petition cases should be exhausted before elected political class would be sworn in.

The Labour Party Youth Leader called on the political parties, civil society organizations and genuinely concerned Nigerians to begin to push and pressurise for the fundamental reforms of both Electoral Law and Judiciary.

He also said the vexed issue of appointment of the INEC chairman and Commissioners by the executive branch should be looked into in the reform with a view to ensuring that politicians or their cronies are not made electoral umpires.