Kogi election: PDP asks Attorney-General, INEC Chairman to resign

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami and the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu,  to resign immediately.

The opposition party criticised Malami for misleading the Mahmood-led INEC into making an unconstitutional decision, by allowing the All Progressives Congress substitute its candidate in the inconclusive Kogi state governorship election.

Owing to the death of Audu Abubakar, the Attorney General had said on Tuesday, that APC would be allowed to substitute the candidate, and the sentiment was subsequently backed by INEC, in an official permission allowing the ruling party make the replacement.

Reacting to the turn of events, National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, released a statement on Tuesday, where Abubakar and Yakubu were accused of being partisan.

“The party is shocked that INEC, a supposedly independent electoral umpire, could allow itself to succumb to the antics of the APC by following the unlawful directive of an obviously partisan AGF to substitute a candidate in the middle of the ballot process.”

“We are all aware that the two legal documents guiding INEC in the conduct of elections; the Constitution and the Electoral Act, have provisions for electoral exigencies as well as empower the electoral body to fully take responsibility for any of its actions or inaction without undue interference from any quarters whatsoever.

“We are therefore at a loss as to which sections of these two relevant laws, INEC and the AGF relied on in arriving at their bizarre decision to substitute a dead candidate in an on-going election even after the timelines for such has elapsed under all the rules.”

“Consequently, the PDP rejects in its entirety, this brazen move by the APC and INEC to circumvent the laws and ambush the yet-to-be concluded election by introducing a practice that is completely alien to the constitution and the electoral act.

“The clear implication of this action of the AGF and INEC is that the APC would be fielding two different governorship candidates in the ongoing Kogi election, meaning that INEC would be transferring votes cast for late Abubakar Audu to another candidate, scenarios that have no place in the constitution of the land.

“Whereas the PDP, in honour of the sanctity of human life and respect for the dead, had since Sunday refrained from making comments on the conduct of the election, we can no longer maintain such in the face of the barefaced attack on our democracy,” the party.

“In view of the foregoing therefore, the PDP demands an immediate resignation of the INEC chairman, as the nation’s democracy cannot afford to be left in the hands of an electoral umpire that cannot exert its independence and the sanctity of the electoral process.”

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