The Independent
National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said that it would not shift
the November 26 governorship election in Ondo State.
This stance by the the electoral body is
despite the manner that it has injected itself into the intra-party
crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party by ignoring legal advice and a subsisting court order and substituting the name of the PDP candidate in its final list for the Ondo guber poll.
According to Punch, INEC said the “crisis in the PDP was not enough ground to call for the postponement of the election”.
There were rumours in Abuja on
Wednesday, November 2, 2016 that one of the factions in the party was
planning to mount pressure on the electoral body to shift the election
and allow the ongoing judicial interventions concluded before the
election could be conducted.
However, Rotimi Oyekanmi, the chief
press secretary to the INEC chairman, affirmed that that the commission
would go ahead with the planned election.
“The process for postponing or shifting
of elections are spelt out in the Electoral Act as amended. One of the
reasons is natural disaster. No aspect of the reasons stated for this
include intra-party crisis as we are witnessing in the party you have
mentioned,” Mr. Oyekanmi said.
“Under the Electoral Act, intra-party
conflict is not recognised as one of the reasons why INEC must shift the
date of an election we have given notice of since March.
“As I speak today, there is no plan to postpone it. We are going ahead with the election as slated for November 26.”
Oyekanmi added that “there are 40
political parties in Nigeria and if there is crisis in at least half of
them, you can imagine what we would be going through and how many times
we would be postponing the election.”
Apart from this, he said other political
parties could take the commission to court if it acceded to the request
of those who could be thinking that the election must be shifted
because of intra-party crisis.
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