ENUGU, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- A group under the auspices of Intersociety and Partners, has alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has disenfranchised 77.7 million citizens of voting age based on ethnic and religious grounds.
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rules of Law claimed that among the disenfranchised registered and unregistered voters are; 18.2m new voters’ registrations from the 2022 Continuous Voters Registration (CVR).
The Intersociety laid this bare through its Board of Chair, Emeka Umeagbalasi, during its 2022 Christmas Days Global Media Conference held on Sunday, in Enugu State.
The group further condemned the INEC’s shrinking of PVC distribution across the country to only 26 days, describing it as unacceptable.
It claimed that it is indicting and suspicious for the electoral body that spent eight months to ‘hide’ under enough time to print and distribute PVCs, to end up disenfranchising many Nigerians.

It said: “Intersociety is reiterating its strong opposition and unacceptability to INEC’s shrinking of PVC distribution across the country to only 26 days.
“It is totally indicting and strongly suspicious for the Commission that spent eight months or May to December 2022 to hide under “enough time to print and distribute PVCs” and end up disenfranchising whopping 77.7 million Nigerian citizens of voting age since May 2022,has turned around to shrink the PVC distribution to only “40 days” of 12 December 2022 to 22 January 2023.”
Umeagbalasi also alleged that INEC is gambling and tinkering with the future of Nigerians and Nigeria, especially, its collective security and corporate existence, ahead of the 2023 presidential election.
The group further claimed that the commission is manifesting incapability of organizing inclusive, turbulence free, secure, popular and credible presidential election in Nigeria on 25 February, 2023.
“As a matter of fact, the Chairman of the Commission and all its National Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners are unfit to continue in office and ought to have resigned en masses.
“Apart from manifestly playing ethnic and religious cards, the named top officials of INEC are grossly partisan and have reduced themselves to ‘political’ jobbers and errand boys of their appointing and oversight government authorities having portrayed themselves jointly and individually as card-carrying members/sympathizers of the centrally ruling political part,” he added.
The media conference which is supported by friends of Intersociety in United States of America and United Kingdom, also called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to deploy 60 per cent Eastern Indigenous composition of the High Command Cadre military and policing in the east.
The group also urged the government to transfer senior military and police officers out of the Eastern part of the country.
According to Umeagbalasi, the government should transfer senior military and police officers out of the Eastern part of the country, saying that the “East is under the siege of state actor security without local contents, sobriquet, state actor insecurity or terrorism, to the extent that the region is being offered corrupted and biased securitization.”
The group opined that one of the Permanent solutions to ravaging insecurity in the East is political revolution through PVC ballot.
The media conference which is supported by friends of Intersociety in United States of America and United Kingdom, noted that the overhauls must be done as soon as possible.
It said: “There must be 60% Eastern Indigenous composition of the High Command Cadre military and policing deployments in the East, 20% non Eastern Christians/non Muslims and 20% non Eastern Muslims.
“The overhauls must be done as a matter of uttermost immediacy and be extended to heads his of spy police formations in the eleven states of the East, as well as principal officers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force bases, artilleries, battalions and engineering regiments in Warri, Ogoja, Abakaliki, Enugu, Elele, Ogbaru, Owerre-Nta, Asa sns Aba.
“East is under the siege of state actor security without local contents, sobriquet, state actor insecurity or terrorism, to the extent that the region is being offered corrupted and biased securitization.”
The group alleged that the deployed security forces and their commanders in the East have earned notoriety in using corrupted, concocted and biased intelligence on insecurity in the East.
Speaking further, Umeagbalasi urged the Federal Government of Nigeria on the need for dismantling of 1500 Military and 4000 Police Roadblocks in the East.
He said the roadblocks are not necessarily on the Eastern roads, rather, aids in the rising criminalities in the region.