Polls: Nigerian Guild of Editors charges fair play

The Nigerian Guild of Editors has called for fair play in the February 2015 general elections, stressing that the reputation of the country, as well as that of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is at stake.

It stated this in a communiqué, signed by its president Femi Adesina and issued at the end of its last quarterly meeting for 2014. The statement noted that; “With the shoddy arrangements in the

issuance of Permanent Voters Cards, there is urgent need for INEC to redeem the process by ensuring that eligible voters are not disenfranchised”.

It added that; “Editors advise the political class, security agents and the populace to be cautious in their utterances, abide by the rules of campaigning and exhibit tolerance before and during the elections to avoid over-heating the polity’, noting that; “Security agencies, particularly, should be non-partisan”.

It further said the Guild lamented the protracted nature of insurgency in the northern part of the country, especially in Nigeria’s North East, with its attendant huge death toll and massive number of

Internally Displaced Persons, adding that the crises call for harmonisation of efforts, change of tactics, and a review of the country’s security architecture, to win the war.

It said; “The sudden sharp fall in global oil prices is a wakeup call on the Nigerian government to urgently go beyond rhetorics by developing economic policies and measures to diversify the economy.

Federal and other arms of Government must take drastic actions to reduce the huge cost of governance, particularly in the face of recently announced austerity measures.”

It also lamented the high rate of failure in the November/December results of the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, believing it is symptomatic of the decay in the education sector. It therefore called for increased allocation to the education sector as well as training and retraining of teachers.