Emmanuel Thomas
November 26, 2015 – The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has called for resignation of the Chairman of the Independent national Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu.
The party said he should resign because he is incompetent for adopting the view of Attorney General of the Federation, Mallam Abubakar Malami that the All Progressive Congress (APC) should substitute its late candidate Prince Audu Abubakar for supplementary election scheduled for December.
In a communique after an emergency national caucus meeting, the party said that substituting Audu suggests that the APC fielded two candidates for same election, a development, it said is alien to both the electoral law and Nigeria’s constitution.
The party said that the death of Audu presupposes that APC had no candidate for the election and should have declared its candidate, Governor Idris Wada winner of the election.
We Insist “ that with the death of its candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu, the APC has legally crashed out of the governorship race as no known law or constitutional provision allows the substituting of candidates, once the ballot process has commenced.
“Insists that with the unfortunate death of Prince Abubakar Audu, the APC has no valid candidate in the election, leaving INEC with no other lawful option than to declare the PDP candidate, Capt. Idris Wada as the winner of the election.”, it said.
It rejected the decision of INEC in yielding to what it described as unlawful prompting of a clearly partisan Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mallam Abubakar Malami, to allow APC to substitute a candidate in the middle of an election, even when such has no place in the Constitution and the Electoral Act.
“Notes that the combine reading of the provisions of the constitution and Electoral Act does not in any war whatsoever support the substitution of candidates for election in the middle of the ballot process.
“Notes that if APC is allowed to substitute its original candidate, then the party would have fielded two separate candidates in the same election, a scenario that is completely alien to our electoral laws and to any known democratic norms and practice world-over”, it said adding that it has decided to go to court to challenge the decision.
It added that the leadership of INEC as presently constituted under the Chairmanship of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has demonstrated that it is incapable of neutrality and as such cannot be vested with the conduct of the Kogi governorship supplementary election as well as the December 5, 2015 Bayelsa governorship election.
“As a result, caucus demands the immediate resignation of the chairman and all national commissioners of INEC to pave the way for a new non-partisan commission to conduct the forth-coming elections.
“Caucus also demands the immediate resignation of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mallam Abubakar Malami for deliberately misleading INEC into arriving at the unconstitutional decision of allowing APC to substitute its candidate in the inconclusive election.
“ Notes that in order to save the nation’s democracy from imminent collapse, the PDP as a critical stakeholder will immediately challenge this unlawful and unconstitutional decision by INEC in the court.
“Caucus also alerts that the AGF, INEC and APC are creating a scenario where a loser in a primary will patiently wait for the winning candidate to finish election and then have him either poisoned or assassinated before the final collation of results”, it said.
