PPC addressed newsmen in Ado Ekiti on Monday and claimed that INEC disqualified its candidate for the election and also expunged the name of its candidate, Pastor Stephen Obasola, from the list of the candidates in the election.
National Chairman of the party, Mr Benson Adetona, who addressed newsmen, said the party submitted forms CF01 and CF02 to INEC in Abuja, on May 14, 2018, in compliance with the commission’s guidelines, when the party submitted the name of the candidate.
Adetona said it was curious that the party would have to be punished unjustifiably, even when it submitted the candidate’s name a day earlier than the May 15 deadline stipulated by INEC.
He alleged that an official of the commission at its National Chairman’s office was playing pranks on the party by allegedly rejecting the forms on the excuses that they were not attached with forms EC4, EC5 and EC6 which he claimed were irrelevant in this case.
According to Adetona, when it was obvious that INEC was not ready to correct the anomaly, the PPC resorted to writing petitions, which he said they addressed to the chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, on May 18, to which he said no reply was received.
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He said: “The fact that the name of our candidate was listed by INEC as one of the 40 contenders that were acknowledged from Ekiti office of INEC
showed that our primary was free, fair and credible because our party
operates like a family. There is no division.
“When we took forms CF01 and CF02 to the INEC Electoral Party Monitoring Department in Abuja, the officer detailed for the collection said they have to be attached with forms EC 4 and EC 5. But we told him the submission lapsed on May 15. He convinced us that we should not mind, that we can come on May 17 or 18, because of our peculiar situation.
“We got there on May 17 only for the same staff to reject our form. We were referred to heads of Legal Department and Electoral Party Monitoring, but nothing was done.
“We view this action as a serious infringement on our fundamental rights to have a candidate in the Ekiti election. And this was a setback to our electoral system. The election can only be deemed to be free and fair when INEC is fair to all parties.
“As things stand now, we have no option than to seek legal redress in court to ensure that our candidate participates in this election.”
However, INEC, in a reaction through its Public Relations Officer in Ekiti, Mr Taiwo Gbadegesin, said it had no blame in the whole scenario, describing the situation as a self-inflicted injury.
“Submission of candidates is done by the party, so PPC executive should be blamed for submitting the name of candidate late. I want to believe that INEC as an arbiter can’t disqualify candidate without justifiable reason. PPC must look inward to settle its problems,” he said.
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