OPINION BY MOHAMMED HARUNA: The constitution, electoral act, DrAhmadLawan, Akpabio, Falana, INEC and next year’s general election | TheCable
the President and members of the National Assembly on February 25, 2023, and end with those of State Governors and members of State Houses of Assembly two weeks later, i.e., on March 11.
The second spokesman for the Commission is Barrister Festus Okoye, the National Commissioner who, as supervisor of the Commission’s Voter Education and Publicity Department, is its official spokesman. Okoye, senior human rights lawyer and activist, came to this job well recommended by his experience and knowledge of the country’s electoral law and practice.
The simple answer to his angry piece, I said in my reply to him via WhatsApp, was that INEC had no powers to reject candidates sent by political parties. Our role, I said, was simply to monitor party primaries to ensure they adhered to the country’s Constitution, the Electoral Law and their own constitutions and issue, on request, certified true copies of our reports as possible evidence in court in support of any aspirant who felt dissatisfied with the outcome of his party’s primary.
I told Kperogi that at the time I responded to his piece, the Commission was yet to meet, as it always does on such issues, to take a position on the publication of the names of candidates submitted to it by the parties for claims and objections, and so I was merely expressing my personal opinion. The mistake I made, in retrospect, was to have permitted him to publish it, knowing it was likely to be construed as the Commission’s position.However, all this is now academic.
Clearly, Falana was speaking in support of his fellow lawyer Mr. Mike Igini, whose second tenure ended this year as the REC for Akwa Ibom, and whose outspokenness on election matters throughout his two tenures seems to have endeared him to the Nigerian media.
Now, I may be wrong, but so far, no one has gone to court to challenge PDP in substituting the Bauchi and Sokoto governors for the candidates that withdrew after the Governors lost their party’s Presidential primaries and after the governors took part in the FRESH primary mandated by Section 33 of the Act.
Now, it is a notorious fact that there has been no love lost between Akpabio and Igini since the former lost his bid to return to the Senate in the 2019 General Election under Igini’s watch as the state’s REC. Perhaps for that reason Igini refused to have any dealings with the Ntukekpo faction even though INEC Headquarters’ correspondences have always been with that faction in obedience to the Federal High Court ruling in question.
More specifically, this was why INEC could reject Akpabio’s name but could not publish Ekpoudom’s even though Igini’s report said he was validly nominated.
Quite instructively, the Constitution has a separate Sub-section for RECs. This is Sub-section 3 which says “There shall be for each State of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, a Resident Electoral Commissioner” who, like National Commissioners, will be appointed by the President, subject to confirmation by the Senate.