By Analysts see contests as local battles with national implications
By Tasie Theodore
The rescheduled supplementary polls taking place in several states and constituencies across the country has literally put the elections umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC on the ropes, The Difference can report.
This is on account of what the outcome would ultimately convey to a still very charged polity.
Ahead of the halting of the process, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP was reportedly in the lead in states like Benue, Rivers, Kano, Adamawa, Bauchi and Sokoto.
Should the conclusion of the process now throw up the scenario of those states being finally won by the ruling All Progressives Congress, the interpretation for some would be that the halting of the process in the first place was a carefully contrived plot that was designed to produce exactly that outcome.
Already, tempers are reportedly high in states like Adamawa, Kano and Bauchi even as the commission continues to assure stakeholders that it would yet deliver on the promise of free and fair polls.
Compounding the situation would be the role of security agencies that would reportedly be on duty once again on Saturday. Given that many commentators, and indeed INEC itself, have already placed the blame for some of the crises that attended the last phase of the polls process, at the doorsteps of security personnel, it remains to be seen if they will do better than they had reportedly done in the other earlier phases of the polls process.
Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari
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