POLITICAL STRUCTURE MYTH HAS BEEN DISMANTLED, SAYS FALANA

Femi Falana

Falana said that in the just concluded elections, the people showed that they are the structure

Despite the difficulties surrounding the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25, according to human rights attorney Femi Falana, SAN, numerous successes were noted, including the debunking of the concept of political structure.

The people demonstrated that they are the structure, according to Falana, in the recently held elections.

"There are some positive developments that were recorded. For instance, the myth of these political structures has been destroyed whereby people have shown that we are the structure, and the people are the structure ultimately.

"Secondly, young people have also shown this time around that we are going to determine the future of our country. Thirdly, you no longer have to be a moneybag to contest elections in Nigeria. Another development is that whereas the Senate chamber has been converted to a resting home for former governors; this time around, many of the governors lost their seats, they lost in the election and seats, they lost in the election and so they won't be able to go back to the national assembly.

"The other development is that sitting governors and sitting president could not win their states for their political parties. So, in spite of the challenges, a number of positive developments have been recorded by our country, and of course, I think the most significant is the use of BVAS for accreditation. It has improved the accreditation of voters," Falana said.

Optimism that the Independent National Electoral Commission will address the issue before the March 18 gubernatorial and state assembly elections despite their incapacity to electronically upload results to their central server in real-time as they promised before the polls.

Falana asserted that Nigerians will not accept another excuse from the INEC for delaying the governorship and state assembly elections by one week, as he is confident that they won't make the same error of failing to upload results from voting places in real time.