The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), has responded to the lawsuit filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) seeking the disqualification of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Labour Party (LP) over their choice of presidential running mates.
The Commission’s National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, made this clarification yesterday, during an interview on a television programme.
Earlier, the PDP filed a lawsuit against INEC in an effort to prevent the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and the LP presidential candidate, Peter Obi, from choosing Kashim Shettima and Datti Baba-Ahmed respectively as their running mates.
The PDP also requested that the court resolve that Kabiru Masari and Doyin Okupe, Tinubu and Obi’s respective former running mates, are required for each of them to be eligible to run for office alone.
The opposition party is asking for a court injunction that would prevent the Independent National Electoral Commission from changing Tinubu and Obi’s running mates in the original summons with suit number: FHC/ABJ/CS/1016/2022. In this case, INEC, APC, Tinubu, Masari, Labour Party, Obi, and Okupe are the first to seventh respondents.
Recall that Tinubu had chosen Masari to serve as a stand-in so that he could meet the INEC deadline on June 17. Okupe, Obi’s campaign manager, was also put forward as a temporary running mate. Masari and Okupe resigned after several weeks of discussion, and Tinubu and Obi then proposed Shettima and Baba-Ahmed as replacements.
In his clarification yesterday, Okoye noted that there was no provision for a placeholder in the forms submitted by the political parties. He further cited Section 33 of the Electoral Act while buttressing the need for a fresh election in the case of Senatorial elections, while the parties are free to nominate candidates, in the case of presidential and governorship elections.
