Court changes order of April polls

Posted by admin Elections 2011 Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja yesterday nullified the sequence of general elections as rolled out by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in its electoral guidelines and timetable of activities for the April polls.

The court restrained the Commission from going ahead with the order of election while ruling on the suit filed by the Labour Party (LP) challenging the power of the National Assembly to fix the sequence of elections for the INEC.

INEC had released its electoral timetable late last year fixing in the following sequence the time of the election: National Assembly elections, April 2, presidential election, April 9 and the state Assemblies and governorship elections, April 16.
The order and sequence of elections as released by the INEC had drawn criticisms from LP and a wide spectrum of political stakeholders, most of whom contended that the sequence and order were deliberately put in the Electoral Act by the National Assembly to help the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) win elections. They had contended that the arrangement would lead to a bandwagon effect in favour of PDP.

The LP filed a suit to challenge the order and sequence of the elections. Delivering judgment in the suit, in which the Attorney General of the Federation was joined as co-defendant, Justice Ibrahim Auta held that Section 25(1) as enshrined in the 2010 Electoral Act by the lawmakers upon which the order of elections was fashioned, was inconsistent with sections 76(1), 116(1), 132(1), and 178(1) of the 1999 constitution as amended and therefore void.

Besides, the Judge held that lawmakers lacked legislative competence to lead the INEC on how it would conduct its electoral business. “The National Assembly was not competent in law to have created section 25(1) of the Electoral Act when the Constitution has taken care of that,” Auta ruled.
The controversial section, according to him, infringes on the constitutional right of the Commission to fix date, time and sequence of elections. “It is not the responsibility of the National Assembly to assume responsibility of another government agency whose functions are defined under the law.”

Counsel to LP, Chief Chukwuma U. Ekomaru (SAN) described the judgment as a victory for democracy and triumph of rule of law. National Chairman of the party, Chief Dan Nwayanwu said he had all along held the view that no illegality would be allowed by the progressives in the current democratic process. “The PDP thought they have had their way; any other illegality would be fought to a logical conclusion,” he stated in an interview last night.

The LP had last October filed the suit contending that the order of the election as contained in the Section 25(1) of the Electoral Act and which INEC relied on to fix the categories of election was inconsistent with section 40 of the constitution which guarantees freedom of association and the right of Nigerians to freely belong to any political party of their choice for the protection of their interest.
LP argued that the insertion of section 25(1) of the Electoral Act will rob Nigerians the right guaranteed by the constitution as the order of the election will create a bandwagon effect in that once the president emerges first, then other Nigerians will tilt towards the president’s party to the detriment of the other 62 registered parties.

It asked the court to stop INEC from conducting the election and order the Commission to reorder the elections to start from the state Assemblies and governors, to be followed by the National Assembly elections and the presidential election coming last.

-Sunwp_posts