The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has said that it would not shift the November 26 governorship election in Ondo State.
This stance by the the electoral body is despite the manner that it has injected itself into the intra-party crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party by ignoring legal advice and a subsisting court order and substituting the name of the PDP candidate in its final list for the Ondo guber poll.
According to Punch, INEC said the “crisis in the PDP was not enough ground to call for the postponement of the election”.
There were rumours in Abuja on Wednesday, November 2, 2016 that one of the factions in the party was planning to mount pressure on the electoral body to shift the election and allow the ongoing judicial interventions concluded before the election could be conducted.
However, Rotimi Oyekanmi, the chief press secretary to the INEC chairman, affirmed that that the commission would go ahead with the planned election.
“The process for postponing or shifting of elections are spelt out in the Electoral Act as amended. One of the reasons is natural disaster. No aspect of the reasons stated for this include intra-party crisis as we are witnessing in the party you have mentioned,” Mr. Oyekanmi said.
“Under the Electoral Act, intra-party conflict is not recognised as one of the reasons why INEC must shift the date of an election we have given notice of since March.
“As I speak today, there is no plan to postpone it. We are going ahead with the election as slated for November 26.”
Oyekanmi added that “there are 40 political parties in Nigeria and if there is crisis in at least half of them, you can imagine what we would be going through and how many times we would be postponing the election.”
Apart from this, he said other political parties could take the commission to court if it acceded to the request of those who could be thinking that the election must be shifted because of intra-party crisis.
