The House of Representatives caucus of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP on Tuesday said the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC officials lied under oath in their presentation before the House on Electoral Act Amendment last Friday.
To this end, the PDP Caucus is demanding an immediate prosecution of the Chairman of the commission and his officials for falsifying information under oath.
This was in a statement signed by the caucus leader, Rep Kingsley Chinda.
The opposition lawmakers apparently peeved by the show of shame last Friday staged a walkout from plenary during the consideration of both Chambers harmonised report.
In the statement, the PDP caucus said:
“It was a show of shame on the floor of the House of Representatives on Friday, July 17, 2020 during the consideration of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.
“The comedy of errors started by the House stopping INEC from appearing before the House to prevent the nation from learning the truth and allowing only NCC to appear to discuss issues on the ability or otherwise of INEC to handle electronic transmission of votes.
“Officials of the NCC led by Executive Director, Ubale Maska, who represented the Executive Vice Chairman, Prof Umaru Garba Danbatta appeared and oath was administered on them consistent with the Section 5 of the Legislative House (Powers and Privileges) Act 2017.
“While testifying before the House, on the adoption of electronic transmission of results from the units, Ubale Maska claimed that the 2018 Technical Report of the NCC showed that only about “50 per cent of the polling units had 3G while 49 percent had 2G network and below”. His answers and body language clearly betrayed his intense desire to mislead the House and the nation.
“He cleverly sought to rely on 2018 data in 2021, when they knew or ought to know that internet penetration has advanced substantially in Nigeria since 2018”.
The statement said a perusal of NCC website showed that the Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2020-2025 (P .33) said that by September 2019, the “Spread of 3G/LTE” had reached 74.2 per cent in Nigeria.
The caucus said MTN alone recently announced that they achieved an extensive nationwide network coverage of 89.9 per cent.
“Perhaps the worst form of perfidy, deception and outright lies is for NCC to hide the Memorandum of Understanding between NCC and INEC in 2019.
“During preparations for the 2019 general election, Mahmood Yakubu, INEC Chairman, had in January 2018, visited the NCC to discuss collaboration that would enhance the electoral process.
“A joint technical committee of INEC and NCC was subsequently formed with a mandate to map out strategies that would reduce human interventions in the transmission of election results. The committee was headed by Maska and co-chaired by Muhammed Lecky, an INEC national commissioner.”
“After several meetings and engagements, it was then recommended that the “INEC/NCC joint technical committee should consider and adopt the traditional data communication service from MNOs using APN as the most appropriate solution for the electronic transmission of election results.”
The statement further said: “The icing on the cake is the categorical declaration by INEC through Festus Okoye, their spokesman that INEC has the capacity to transmit election results from any part of the country, no matter the terrain has put the final nail on the coffin of the purveyors of the falacy that it cannot be done. Electronic Transmission has recently been deployed by INEC in Edo, Ondo, Borno, Kaduna elections etc”.
The PDP caucus said that it was obvious there were fifth Columnists and anti-democratic elements afraid of a free, fair and credible elections in the country.
“For a witness to be sworn under Section 5 of the Legislative House (Powers and Privileges) Act 2017, then proceed to lie under oath and give false evidence to the House is an offence under Section 7 of the same Act. We call on the prosecuting authorities to immediately arrest the officials of the NCC, under Prof Danbatta and all those who procured Ubale Maska and other officials to lie under oath to be criminally investigated and where found culpable, be brought to justice by standing criminal trial.
“We must maintain the integrity of our laws and sanctity of our institutions as a nation”, the statement added.
