ABUJA: INEC Chairman Berates Judiciary On Conflicting Rulings

Prof. Mahmood Yakubu

CHAIRMAN of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, yesterday, described the controversial decisions of the various courts in the country in respect of the adjudication of the elections conflicts that arose from the previous elections as a threat to the nation’s democracy.

Yakubu registered this remarks at the opening ceremony of a National Conference on Election Petition Tribunals and Appeals, organised by the Court of Appeal in Abuja stressing that there was need for certainty in the laws governing the resolution of electoral conflicts rather than the illogical conclusions given by the courts on most of the cases presented before them. 

“There is need for certainty in the rules governing the resolution of electoral disputes. Judicial precedence is of immense importance, without which neither the judiciary nor INEC will be spared of impunity by political actors”. 

Emphatically, the INEC boss recalled a situation where a particular division of the appellate court ordered INEC to conduct fresh election, in which only the duly qualified candidates participated only for another division of the court, under similar circumstance, to nullify the election, disqualified the candidate and allowed the political party to submit the name of another candidate for a re-run poll. Yet in another division, the Court of Appeal nullified the election, ordered INEC to conduct fresh election, but remained silent about the status of the disqualified candidates, thereby giving room for endless commentary and new rounds of litigation on the eligibility of the disqualified candidate to participate in re-run elections.

He however reiterated on the commission’s absolute submission to the legal judicial system in the country irrespective of the ugly developments.