The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Monday boasted that no amount of intimidation and grandstanding by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can stop the party from fielding candidates for all elective positions in Zamfara State in the 2019 general elections.
The governing party’s position comes against the backdrop of the electoral body’s insistence that all APC candidates in Zamfara stand disqualified from the polls over the Party’s inability to meet the Sunday, October 7, 2018 deadline for the conduct of primary elections.
But reacting to INEC’s Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu assertion at the validation workshop on cost of elections within the ECOWAS sub-region in Abuja, APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Malam Lanre Issa-Onilu said the party is ready with the list of its candidates for all positions for Zamfara State for submission before the October 18, 2018 deadline.
According to Issa-Onilu, “INEC cannot say that we don’t have candidates for election until the deadline has expired. We have options of consensus, direct and indirect primaries and we are going to apply, like we have done in other states, our energies, time and concerns to pick our candidates.”
Issa-Onilu said as a responsible party, the APC would meet all criteria for submission of candidates from Zamfara state, adding; “I can assure you that before the October 18 deadline, we are going to meet all INEC requirements and we are going to submit names of all the candidates for not only Zamfara but the 36 states and the FCT”.
On widely speculated views about the party might dragging the electoral Commission to court over the issue, Issa-Onilu said; “It is not yet something for the party to take legal action.”
Insisting that APC would not join issues with INEC in the public space over its primary elections held in Zamfara State, Issa-Onilu said; “We are operating within the guidelines of INEC and the Constitution of the Federal Republic Nigeria.
“We believe that INEC does not have the correct information on what happened in Zamfara and this we have stated in our letter to the commission.
The APC spokesman said after replying to the letter it received from INEC, the party is still awaiting a formal response from the Commission and can therefore not be reacting to every media comments credited to the electoral umpire.
He said; “They haven’t replied our letter, we also ask INEC that if they need more information from us, that we will be ready to offer it.”
The INEC Chairman was again quoted as maintaining that the Commission does not have reasons to reverse itself on the decision to bar APC from fielding candidates for all elective positions in Zamfara come 2019 over its failure to conduct primaries in line with the existing election timetable.
Speaking on the sideline of the three-day validation workshop on the study on the cost of election in the ECOWAS sub-region, the INEC boss said; “On Zamfara, nothing has changed. We have said it and we have earlier issued a statement on the position of things and that still remains our position”.
In a letter addressed to the APC, INEC gave notice of the party’s inability to conduct primaries for the 2019 polls in accordance with the Commission’s approved deadline of October 7, 2018. – With NAN reports
