… speaks on electoral process
… hails Mgt. for neutrality, PCM for professionalism
Abdulrasaq Fatoyi and Okafor Precious
The Directorate of Students Affairs (DSA), Moshood Abiola Polytechnic has confirmed that it camped delegates the night to the SUG election.
It said that the reason for this action bordered on security.
The delegates were the ones who were duly elected by the DSA as representatives of each department in the Electoral College system deployed during the just concluded SUG Election.
Speaking to Press Club MAPOLY, the DSA director, Dr. Olusegun Aninikan explained that if it had allowed the delegates to come from their homes on the day of election, some might not show up because of security reasons.
He explained further that the reason to their seized phones was to avert any form of controversy as regards spread of fake results before and during the election.
He said, “We camped the delegates and the SUELECO for two reasons which are for security reasons because if we allow the delegates to come from their various homes, some might not come due to security reason. Some people have been saying that we should give them the list of the delegates but we refused so that they would not be bought over, hence, we brought them together.
“The second reason is to avert any other means of controversy and that was the reason we collected all their phones so that nobody would have the opportunity to spread fake news as they did in 2017 when somebody publicized fake results while the election was still on then and that led to inconclusion of that election; and learning from this, everybody was brought together. And to see how important the camping was, I had to switch my phone off since yesterday and the SUELECO did so to ensure nobody is compromised.”
On the electoral process, Aninikan stated that due to the absence of financial members, the school had to resort to delegate-election in order to ensure that the school has a Students Union running since 2017.
“This process was done to get prepared for an enlarged democratic election because if we don’t do this now, by next session the problem will still continue.
“The Students Union constitution says only the financial members and on that basis, the election fell back to delegate election because we don’t have financial members due to the situation in MAPOLY. Through the SRC made up of students, we came of necessity of doctrine. The management took it to the academic board and it was approved that the delegate-election should hold, and how did we go about this delegate-election: each programme elected one candidate each. For example Business Administration ND1,ND2, HND1, HND2 had one delegate each, same thing goes with the rest programmes.
“By the time we are going to do the next general election, it will be E-voting.The type of E-voting we used last year of which some people destabilized the process and the people behind that action were former students who were the ones that caused crisis at the debate yesterday,” he said.
The director confirmed its impartiality in the process, stating that the process shall be accounted for before God.
“I told the electoral body that none of us has business here and whatever we do, we shall account for it before God,” he said.
Reacting to some aspirants stepping down, the director stated that it is unaware of any aspirant stepping down because they didn’t submit any document to the body in that regard.
He said, “That somebody stepped down, officially, that is not known to us. They applied for the position, they were screened. After that, they collected another form. If they are saying that they are stepping down, when they were showing their interest, it was not by word of mouth. It was by expression on paper.”
The DSA thanked the school management for its support, and hailed its neutrality in the whole process.
It also praised Press Club MAPOLY for its professionalism during the debate held and its coverage of the election.
His words, “I really want to appreciate the management for their sincere support because if not for their support and their sincerity we might have not been able to get to this level. They are so neutral, whereby they left us to coordinate the process ourselves.
“And moreso, to MAPOLY Press Club. They have been doing wonderfully well since yesterday at the manifesto and debate ground. I felt so proud of them for their yesterday’s performance and today’s performance was also marvelous and I think it’s a leap forward so that other people will learn from us.”
The Director finally assured that the inauguration of the newly elected SUG Executives will be carried out soon as it awaits approval from the management and academic board.
