Chief Great Ogboru, the candidate of Labour Party for the April 11 governorship election in Delta, on Wednesday urged that soldiers should not be deployed for the 2015 general elections.
Ogboru, who spoke with newsmen in Lagos, said that deployment of soldiers for elections could take away the civility of the process.
“We shouldn’t deploy soldiers,’’ the governorship candidate told newsmen.
He also spoke on the preparedness of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the elections.
Ogboru said that INEC should have test-run the card readers to be used for accreditation during the elections, before deploying them in the over 119,000 polling units across the country.
“There should have been a pilot test; we are apprehensive of the outcome of the use of card readers,’’ Ogboru said.
He also said that the order of the elections should have been reversed to further reduce tension.
“The tension about the presidential election is so much; I advocate that the governorship election should come first.
“However, we can only advocate, but not decide,’’ he said.
Ogboru said that he was making another attempt at getting to the Delta Government House after previous attempts in 2003, 2007 and 2011.
The candidate said that he believed that he had made a lot of progress over the years.
According to him, the Labour Party is fully on ground in the state and will win in a free and fair election.
Ogboru said that Labour Party programmes were meant to bring a paradigm shift in the state with a system that would improve the lives of the people.
The candidate said that though he intended to wrest power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta, he pledged his support for
President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid.
Ogboru lauded Jonathan for being able to organise credible elections in 2011, saying that the president deserved his support.
“The Labour Party in Delta is aligning with Mr President,’’ he said.