INEC under pressure to bar VP from polls ...AC alleges
The Action Congress (AC) said it had uncovered a plot in which the Presidency is mounting intense pressure on INEC not to clear Vice President Atiku Abubakar to contest April’s presidential elections.
In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Muhammad, in Abuja yesterday, AC said under the plot, the VP would purportedly not be cleared when INEC releases its list of the candidates who passed its so-called verification exercise on February 5.
The party said with the desperation of President Olusegun Obasanjo to bar his deputy from running, he was surely bent on pushing through the plan, despite legal advice from the Presidency and INEC that such action would be patently illegal.
It, however, warned that INEC lacked the powers to bar the VP or anyone at all from contesting, unless of course the commission wanted to act outside the Electoral Act and the Constitution.
“May we re-state our earlier position that INEC has no business verifying candidates for the forthcoming elections as such action is not grounded in law,” AC said, describing INEC’s so-called verification as an exercise in futility and a waste of taxpayers money
“We will also like to remind the Presidency and INEC that this is not the military era, when one all-powerful dictator will ram his will, whether legal or illegal, down the throats of a captive and helpless citizenry,” it added.
Needless to say, the party said, that there is a subsisting court injunction that the status quo ante bellum should be maintained and that INEC cannot even screen candidates for the polls, talk less of announcing results of such screening.
“AC is fully aware of the president’s supposed last joker, which is to force INEC not to clear the VP in contravention of the laws of the land,” the party said.
“It is common knowledge that this Presidency based on its steepness in lawless and unconstitutional acts -- will not hesitate to bring the nation down just to stop one man from contesting the presidency polls on April 21.
“However, we will like to warn that there is always a limit to political hubris, especially under a democratic dispensation in a politically-sophisticated country like ours,” AC said.
The party said in addition to the development, more illegal voters’ registration centers were being discovered across the country, indicating that the discovery of the registration machines in the homes of some PDP stalwarts in Oyo state was more widespread than thought.
For instance in Kwara state, illegal voters registration is going on unabated in selected institutions of higher learning such as the College of Education Oro, and when this shameful act was brought to the attention of the police they turned a blind eye to the illegality.
However, even more worrisome is the fear that the software to be used for the forthcoming election has been programmed in such a manner as to give victory to the People’s Democratic Party.
The Action Congress therefore called on the National Assembly to investigate these allegations which amount to rigging the 2007 elections even before a single vote is cast.
It is now clear that the scarcity of the machines at the beginning of the registration exercise was artificial, since most of them were first squirreled to PDP chieftains’ homes for illegal registration before they were finally brought out for general use and these recent revelations explain why INEC is so bent on using electronic registrations for the elections,’’ AC said.