CBCN Reitterate Calls For Credible Election
Princess-Ekwi Ajide Abuja
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, CBCN, has ended its first plenary for the year 2023 with a call on Nigerians at all levels, to reject all forms of vote buying and selling to ensure the election is peaceful and credible.
In a communiqué issued at the end of the First Plenary Meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) at the CSN Resource Centre, Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, Durumi, Abuja, the bishops insisted that government has a constitutional and statutory duty of protecting human rights and securing basic justice for all.
The eight paragraph communique, signed by the President of CBCN, Most Reverend Lucius Ugorji and Secretary, Most Reverend Donatus Ogun, opined that society as a whole, is responsible for building up the common good, whereas the government has the role of guaranteeing the minimum conditions that make human rights and justice possible.
According to the bishops, if the primary purpose of party campaigns is to win elections, then the justifiable end is good governance.
The bishops decried the increased insecurity in the country such as Boko Haram insurgents, herdsmen militia, bandits, and unknown gunmen which have continued to unleash terror in different parts of the country.
They called on government, to look into the persisting fuel scarcity, and cash crunch which make the people spend many hours in long queues under harsh conditions trying to buy fuel at exorbitant prices or access cash.
The bishops while cautioning that in the face of the daunting challenges facing the nation, we should not give in to hopelessness and despair, or compromise our values in such a manner as to come up with leaders who are neither intended by God nor truly elected by the people urged citizens, to learn to make the right choices for good governance to thrive and be sustained.
They also urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its officials to ensure that their conducts in the entire electoral process are transparent, honest, and beyond reproach adding that the Commission must ensure that the newly adopted technologies for accreditation, transmission, and collation, are transparently and sincerely deployed and not manipulated to give false results.
