The Benue Youths Forum (BYF) has raised alarm over plots to circumvent the 2022 Electoral Acts by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to smuggle reports on Special Congresses which were neither conducted by the Benue APC nor monitored by the commission.
Kuanum Terrence President of the Forum, said Section 84(4)(c) of the Electoral Act, 2022, makes it mandatory for a political party to choose the Direct Primary mode for electing its candidates, it must conduct Special Congress to ratify the winners of such primaries.
He said in the case of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Benue state, the certified true copies of the various INEC Monitoring Reports issued by the INEC team of observers that monitored APC’s primaries for State and National Assembly in the state did not show the conduct of such Special Congresses making the primaries inchoate, unlawful, null and void.
Kuanum asserted, “It is only the certified true copy of the Monitoring Report for the APC’s Governorship primaries that shows at paragraph 7 that a Special Congress held on the 9th of May, 2022 at the APC Secretariat, Makurdi to ratify the winner of its gubernatorial primaries.”
“The implication is that even before the whistle is blown for commencement of electioneering, the APC in Benue has no Properly Nominated candidates in the entire 32 State Assembly Constituencies, 11 Federal Constituencies and 3 Senatorial Constituencies of Benue State.”
“Faced with this unsavoury reality after the PDP pleaded and front-loaded all these documents, the perennially disorganized APC has resorted to subterfuge in criminal cahoot with the Director of Elections and Parties Monitoring (EPM) in Abuja to give instructions to the INEC in Benue State as well as the various Electoral Officers (EO’s) in the Local Governments to doctor Monitoring Reports on Special Congresses of APC in Benue State.
“The fact that the INEC headquarters is not in the custody of a single special congress report for APC’s State and National Assembly primaries over 2 months after the exercise held on 26th and 27th May 2022 and long after various persons applied formally to INEC in Abuja shows that no such report(s) exists in the first place.”
“To conspire to forge very vital INEC documents is not only a criminal offence under the Electoral Act but also under our regular criminal laws.”
“The EPM Director from Nasarawa State must be reminded that he owes a fiduciary duty to the Nigerian State and not a political party to do just to all without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. Anything short of this breaches the code of conduct for his high office.”
“The police high command has been petitioned to investigate these criminal moves to circumvent extant laws and regulations.”
“It is also worrisome that the APC, who is the architect of their misfortune and impending non-inclusion on the ballot in the 2023 polls in Benue state, are now blaming the state government and the PDP for their ordeal.”
