Anthony Iwuoma
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), in Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Mike Igini, has said the law does not permit politicians and political parties to substitute candidates.
Speaking in a radio programme, in Uyo, the REC warned that such was not permitted under the 2022 Electoral Act as amended, adding that substitution could be possible only by withdrawal or death of the flag-bearer.
Igini described scoffed at the rumoured emergence of former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Senator Godswill Akpabio, as the APC senatorial candidate for Akwa Ibom North West (Ikot Ekpene Senatorial District).
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He said: ”By virtue of Section 31 of the 2022 Electoral Act, the only way somebody can be replaced in any form is through withdrawal by an individual or death. The law is not saying you should go and kill people so that you can have yourself on the ballot. The law is saying that those who have emerged at all levels up to the presidential level, you can decide that you are no longer interested. You can write an application signed by yourself, delivered to your party, which will now deliver it to INEC, but nobody can shave the political head of another person in his or her absence.
“The report of the Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District APC primary as submitted to INEC headquarters in Abuja is final. It is concluded. The train has left the station. The timeline is clear. All those who are in politics should go and study the 2022 Electoral Act very well.
“I hear people talking about substitution. If you look at Section 31 and Section 34 of the Electoral Act, those of you who are still carrying the old idea of the 2010, 2012 Electoral Act in your head, thinking you can substitute willfully, it is no longer so.
“Number two is only in the case of death. Even at that, there will now be a fresh primary. This is the new law. So, what we are seeing going on is clearly a misnomer.”
On the Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District, Igini explained that a rerun could only be conducted among those who participated in the first Senatorial election of May 27, 2022, adding, however, that the Senatorial primary for was neither canceled, nullified nor inconclusive as mischievously reported.
“The question is: Senator Godswill Akpabio, was he an aspirant on the list on the 27th when election for the Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District was conducted? He was not there. We all know that he has been a presidential aspirant up to the last day of the APC convention in Abuja. That was what he participated in.
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“To now say that an individual will conduct a primary for himself, by himself, won by himself, Oh my God! We are ridiculing our democracy. We are showing to the world that we don’t have a system. We are showing that we are a permissive society, that indeed the rule of law means nothing in our country. As at the time INEC report was written, Godswill Akpabio was not an aspirant. We didn’t write a report because of Akpabio, as some people are just talking nonsense,” he stated.
The commissioner explained that he was making the clarification because of some persons trying to drag INEC into controversy and calling him names so as to demonise him for sticking to the law in exercising his duties, insisting that whatever little they do at INEC was decisive “we cannot see something to be white in the morning and then in the afternoon it is black. Such a day will never happen in our lifetime in the service of our country.”
