2023 Elections: INEC Shocker For Lawan, Akpabio, Umahi

• As Electoral umpire releases candidates’ list for 2023 polls
• Confirms Machina as Yobe North APC candidate
• Umahi, Akpabio face stiff opposition

BY EDMOND ODOK – Except the ongoing political gerrymandering yields the expected results, Senate President, Ahmad Lawan; Governor of Ebonyi, David Umahi, and former Niger Delta Minister, Godswill Akpabio are already primed as major casualties in the 2023 general elections.

The three All Progressives Congress (APC) bigwigs have received a shocker from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as their names were conspicuously missing from the list and particulars of candidates vying for several positions at the federal level in the polls.

The document officially made public on Friday further confirms the controversy surrounding the fate of Senator Lawan with regards to his re-election as the Commission insisted on only recognizing Bashir Machina as the rightful winner of the APC Yobe Zone C Senatorial District primary election in the area.

By this decision, the electoral body has effectively distanced itself from the emergence of Senator Lawan whose name was earlier uploaded by the ruling party on the INEC portal as its candidate for the senatorial zone.

The Senate President did not participate in the May 28, 2022, APC primary that produced Machina, but the powers that be in the constituency found a way to sneak his name into the INEC portal after his failed presidential project.

However, the Senator Abdullahi Adamu-led National Working Committee (NWC)’s decision to upload Lawan’s name on the INEC Candidates’ Nomination Portal stirred a lot of controversies, with Machina insisting he remains the duly elected candidate of the APC.

For Senator Akpabio, it remains to be seen how successful he will be in convincing former Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Udom Ekpoudom (rtd) to abandon his claims as the APC Senatorial candidate for the Akwa Ibom North-West district.

The former Niger Delta Affairs Minister had taken a shot at the party’s presidential ticket before returning to contest as Senatorial candidate in a rerun primary held on June 9, 2022, at the Civic Centre in Ikot Ekpene.

Since then, the APC has unfortunately ran into stormy waters as DIG Ekpoudom continues to maintain that there is no backing down given that Akpabio never participated in the May 27 Senatorial primary held by the party.

The former Police top shot’s position is further bolstered by the submission of Akwa Ibom Resident Electoral Commissioner of INEC, Mike Igini, who, in upholding the candidacy of DIG Ekpoudom, described the primary that threw up Senator Akpabio as a sham.

Similarly, issues around Governor Umahi’s candidacy for Ebonyi South Senatorial district still remain hazy as at the time of filing this report.

Earlier reports had confirmed Umahi, who finished sixth in the APC presidential primary where former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, was declared the winner with 1,271 votes, won the ticket for Ebonyi South Senatorial district in a rescheduled primary election.

But shedding light on current developments regarding the list, INEC National Electoral Commissioner for information and Voter Education, Mr Festus Okoye said the Commission is not under obligation to publish the names of candidates submitted by political parties if there are questions over the validity of primaries featuring such candidates.

According to him; “If you look at section 29(1) of the Electoral Act 2022, section 29 says ‘every political party shall not later than 180 days before the date appointed for a general election under this Act, submit to the commission in the prescribed forms, the list of the candidates it proposes to support at the election, who must have emerged from valid primaries conducted by the political parties.

“The commission does not submit the list of candidates. It is the political parties themselves that has been given the locus to submit this particular list and in this case, there is no personal interference between the commission and the political parties.

“We open the portal — what we called ‘candidate nomination portal’ — and we give an access code to the national chairman of each of the political parties that conducted primaries with which they upload the list and personal particulars of their nominated candidates.

“So, if a political party has uploaded the list and personal particulars of a candidate that did not emerge from valid party primary, INEC is not under a constitutional and legal obligation to publish the particulars of such a candidate.”