With less than 48 hours before the Plateau Northern Senatorial zone rerun election, the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, has announced that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), will not be participating in the upcoming election.
The statement was made on Thursday in Jos, the state capital, during the examination of critical electoral materials by Mohammed Haruna, an INEC national commissioner overseeing the North-Central geopolitical zone.
He said:
“We had a meeting with political parties right before now and told them that in a rerun, disqualified candidates and political parties cannot participate, this is an established law, the Supreme Court has ruled about it in Labour versus INEC several years ago and the PDP was a beneficiary of this several years ago.
“INEC is a law-abiding institution, we never flaunt any law.
“We called a meeting of all political parties if PDP went to court and the federal high court declined jurisdiction, what that simply means is that the ruling by the Court of Appeal subsists, and we have to obey the court, our hands are tight by the court in this regard.
“What the court said is what we are going to do whether it is right or wrong unless it is set aside.”
Responding to the ban, Abubakar Dogara, the head of the state’s Inter-Party Advisory Council, or IPAC, said:
“The position of IPAC is that it is either PDP participates in the election or all parties will not take part because the Court of Appeal said all political parties should participate in the election.
“We noticed that one of us is not on the ballot papers and, therefore, we sat down and agreed that an injury to one is an injury to all, therefore, if PDP is not participating, no political party will participate.
“We were not informed that one of us will not be part of the election, we were told that the list of parties that will take part in the election will be forwarded to us within a week, that was on the 9th of January but we never got that list till now, just two days to the election.
“We prefer peace on the Plateau rather than elections or anything.
“We know how fragile the issue of peace is on the Plateau, we are trying to avert anything that will take us to the doom days.”
cc: Daily Post Ng
