ABUJA – Independent National Electoral yesterday, directed the All Progressives Congress to pick a new candidate as replacement for late Prince Abubakar Audu in order to continue with supplementary election.
APC candidate in last Saturday guber poll, Audu died just as INEC was collating the results of the November 21 election, in which he was leading.
In a statement signed by the secretary to the commission, Augusta Ogakwu, on Tuesday, INEC announced it would allow the conclusion of the election process by conducting supplementary elections in the remaining 91 polling units where elections were cancelled.
The supplementary election will hold December 5, INEC announced.
Meanwhile, PDP has asked the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mallam Abubakar Malami and the chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, to resign their positions.
They alleged that Malami has misled INEC into arriving at an “unconstitutional decision” to allow the APC to substitute its candidate in the inconclusive Kogi State governorship election.
Briefing journalists yesterday, PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, noted that the party was shocked that INEC, a supposedly independent electoral umpire could succumb to the antics of the APC by following the “unlawful directive” of an obviously partisan AGF to substitute a candidate in the middle of the ballot process.
“We are all aware that the two legal documents guiding INEC in the conduct of elections; the Constitution and the Electoral Act, have provisions for electoral exigencies as well as empower the electoral body to fully take responsibility for any of its actions or inactions without undue interference from any quarters whatsoever.
We are therefore at a loss as to which sections of these two relevant laws, INEC and the AGF relied on in arriving at their bizarre decision to substitute a dead candidate in an on-going election even after the timelines for such has elapsed under all the rules.
INEC as a statutory body has the full complements of technical hands in its legal department to advice it appropriately and we wonder why it had to wait for directives from the AGF, an external party, if not for partisan and subjective interest.
Consequently, the PDP rejects in its entirety, this brazen move by the APC and INEC to circumvent the laws and ambush the yet-to-be concluded election by introducing a practice that is completely alien to the constitution and the electoral act.
The clear implication of this action of the AGF and INEC is that the APC would be fielding two different governorship candidates in the ongoing Kogi election, meaning that INEC would be transferring votes cast for late Prince Abubakar Audu to another candidate, scenarios that have no place in the constitution of the land.
Whereas the PDP, in honour of the sanctity of human life and respect for the dead, had since Sunday refrained from making comments on the conduct of the election, we can no longer maintain such in the face of the barefaced attack on our democracy.
This INEC under the leadership of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has shown itself as partisan, morally bankrupt and obviously incapable of conducting a credible election within our laws.
In view of the foregoing therefore, the PDP demands an immediate resignation of the INEC Chairman, as the nation’s democracy cannot afford to be left in the hands of an electoral umpire that cannot exert its independence and the sanctity of the electoral process”, he continued.
As a result of the development, the party has summoned an emergency national caucus meeting for Wednesday, to enable it take a decision on what it described as “threat to democracy.”
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, INEC Chairman
