AHEAD of the general elections scheduled to begin next month, 61 political parties have threatened to drag Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to court over the latter’s guidelines for the general elections.
The development came few days after the political parties, operating under the aegis of Coalition of United Political Parties,CUPP, and Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC, unanimously rejected the draft guidelines presented to them by the electoral umpire.
In a statement signed yesterday by CUPP’s first national spokesman, Ikenga Ugochinyere, the 61 aggrieved parties said they will file a legal suit today to stop INEC from releasing the guideline and also quash some sections of the draft guideline, which were in conflict with the provisions of the 1999 constitution, including the obnoxious provisions inserted into the guideline which will lead to massive rigging of the 2019 elections.
The parties stated: “The suit which will be filed tomorrow (today),at the Federal High Court by 10am has four national chairmen of four political parties suing on behalf of the rest of the 61 political parties against the guideline.”
“Ikenga Ugochinyere, APP; Dr Sam Eke,GPN; Nsehe Nseobong, RP Party and Barr. Kenneth Udeze, AA, will be seeking an exparte application for an injunction to restrain INEC chairman from going ahead with Monday’s planned release of the controversial guideline which majority of the nation’s political parties (over 61) have rejected over non-consultation, obnoxious clauses and violation of the Constitution.”
“The chairmen of the political parties still insist that the only way to have free and fair election is for those obnoxious clauses contained in the guidelines which does not promote free and fair elections to be expunged and that the INEC chairmen summons an emergency meeting with political parties chairmen to finally address the grey areas contained in the guidelines to avoid the 2019 election running into a hitch and credibility crisis, even before the day of election.
“The parties still insist that the chairman of INEC retains the 2011 and 2015 separate accreditation and separate voting system which Nigerian voters are fully familiar with and avoid creating confusion and loophole for massive tampering of result with the continuous/same time accreditation and voting.
‘’INEC recently tried the method in a few re-runs but that is not enough to extend such voting method to all parts of the country a few weeks to the election.
Credit: Vanguradng
