….Says April-June primaries too hasty

By Clifford Ndujihe

FORMER Presidential Candidate and a Chieftain of the All Progressive Congress, Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has urged the National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu,  to stop meddling in the internal affairs of political parties.

Faulting Yakubu’s  “unnecessary haste to pass judgement over who is to be the chair of the All Progressive Congress, and what process to follow,” Olawepo-Hashim, said that “INEC is not a court of law and neither is Yakubu a school principal to bark out orders to political parties that he considers as his students.”

Last Friday, the INEC rejected the notice for an emergency meeting of the APC National Executive Committee (NEC). INEC secretary, Rose Oriaran-Anthony, confirmed the commission’s decision in a letter dated March 9, 2022, and addressed to the party’s national chairman

In a statement by his media Olawepo-Hashim said “the invitation to observe a meeting of the APC is not an occasion to give lectures on how the party should run, they were merely invited to observe.  INEC could just have stayed away. It will not have invalidated the meeting. Under the constitution of parties, deputies can call meetings where authorised officials are not available.

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“A third of the membership of any party organ can call a meeting. It is not just chairman and secretaries of parties that can call meetings. There is something fishy about INEC’s actions. It is like INEC is working a script to complicate things for the APC.”

He also said that INEC’s hastily rolled out election time table which stipulates that all parties must conduct their primaries between April and June is suspicious and could have been designed to favour some political interests contrary to the spirit and provisions of electoral Act 2022 which stipulates that nomination must close at least 180 days to election.

“180 days to the election is September 2022 not June. In spite of many good provisions of the Electoral Act 2022,  it carries many obnoxious provisions that impugn on citizens political rights as well as freedom  of Association.

“Some of the provisions of the INEC’s guidelines are equally defective. All the various provisions may soon be tested by aggrieved parties and such challenges have reasonable grounds of success. Nigeria is a democracy not an autocracy,” he said.