Following the midnight postponement of February 16th 2019 presidential and National Assembly elections by a week, Oyo State Alliance for Democracy (AD) gubernatorial candidate, Engr. Oyedele Hakeem Alao (OHA), popularly known as ‘Allow Alao’ has called for caution on the part of the stakeholders.
The much hyped election scheduled for Saturday was postponed by one week by the electoral body, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over what it described as logistic problems.
Attempt to go ahead with the election as scheduled by the agency would result in not voting simultaneously in all the states across the country according to the electoral umpire.
The development, according to Engr. Alao has led to accusations and counter accusations between the two contending political parties for the presidency, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a situation that has left the general populace bewildered and astounding.
The AD flag-bearer noted that the economic and social implications of the postponement were enormous and might not be quantifiable in view of the fact that both material and human resources had been deployed ahead of the postponed election, but believed that the need to have credible, free, fair and free from fear elections has no price.
He said, “it is true that we were all ready to go to the polls and were convinced about the readiness of INEC for the exercise and this made the postponement shocking. But, whatever happens, Nigeria is our country and there’s no sacrifice too much to make to have an election that all of us wil be proud of.
“We cannot throw out the baby with the birth water, the set-back is not enough to totally describe INEC as a failure or to warrant either our loss of confidence in the electoral body or interest in the entire process. No, that’s not the way to go. We can only appeal to the agency to ensure it puts its house in order ahead of the new date”, he said further.
Engr. Alao also used the occasion to call on Nigerians not to submit to the antics of the enemies of this country, both within and without, who may want to use the postponement to unnecessarily heat up the polity, stressing that “the election under reference is about our destiny and those of our children and must not give room for anything whatsoever that will derail our conviction for sustainable electoral process.
