Judiciary Wants INEC To Stop Accepting Candidates With Pending Petitions. As preparations for the 2015 general election gather momentum, the judiciary yesterday asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to desist from accepting candidates presented by political parties with petitions pending against them. The call was made by the Chief Judge of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Justice I. M. Bukar. Bukar, who spoke at a retreat on Modalities for Making and Gazetting INEC Regulations, organised by INEC, further accused political parties of hiding under the pitfalls in their constitutions to persecute aggrieved members of their parties. Bukar, who was represented at the event by Justice Ishaq Bello, faulted the constitutions of the political parties. The judge was critical of cases by aggrieved party members that are thrown out of courts on the grounds that they had not exhausted internal remedies provided by the constitution of political parties. Bello, who traced the problem to a lacuna in the constitutions of political parties, noted that the inability of such aggrieved members to seek redress in court had become a destructive weapon that was overheating the polity. According to him, There is no proviso that prohibits within the constitution of the parties that while grievances are being addressed by a political party, the name of his aspirant should not be submitted to INEC for purposes of the election. This absence of a proviso is a very destructive weapon. While he decried that INEC had been enjoined to accept such candidates Justice Bello said: Even when INEC is enjoined by court to accept candidates, of parties, in my view the anticipation is that the ideal situations must have been complied with for INEC to say we have accepted a candidate. Now, what I am saying here is that political parties would hang the grievance of an aggrieved member of the party without attending to it and when they get to court they bring lawyers and say the party member has not exhausted internal party remedies of the party and say, therefore, the court cannot act on his plea. Of course, the court cannot do otherwise. This, in my view, is part of the problem that has been overheating our polity. We need to sit down by way of regulations to address this very potent weapon in creating chaos, causing devastation, discontent and having people going about with heavy hearts with not ready solace in sight. On his part, the INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, who was represented by a commissioner in the commission, Mrs. Thelma Iremirem, said INEC had set up Committee Review of Judgments on Electoral Cases (COREC) to review all the judgments passed by the various tribunals and courts that handled related cases, adding that some of the recommendations had been implemented. The Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), on its part, noted that the success of gazetting INEC regulations would benefit Nigeria’s democracy. In their presentation, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) represented by Harry Bello, lamented that security personnel drafted to maintain security during elections were ill-equipped. He said based on their recent observation of elections in the country, security personnel at polling booths complained of poor welfare, lack of allowances for accommodation and communication gadgets, in spite of their being drafted from neighbouring states. In his contribution, a former Governor of Edo State, Professor Osaretin Osunbor, argued that gazetting of INEC regulations would help in stemming multiple versions of the commission’s regulations. This Day
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 13:11:03 +0000
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