Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has bowed to Supreme Court Judgement and as such declares PDP candidates winners in all the electoral positions in Zamfara state.
The electoral body is to issue PDP governorship candidate, Bello Matawalle and others winners of the 2019 general election others.
According to the INEC boss, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, following the judgment by the court, the commission met and took advice from its lawyers based on the judgement and determined that PDP won both the Governorship and Deputy Governorship positions.
INEC said it got to the conclusion based on the stipulations in Section 179 and subsection 2 of the 1999 constitution.
Are there no women in Zamfara state? How could all elective offices be occupied by men in a state where the population of women is more than men’s, and in this 21st century? No political Party should be allowed to field all males in all political positions from now on. All political parties must field at least a woman out of the three senatorial seats. The positions of governor and deputy governor must encompass a man and a woman, in either order, in all political parties’ nominations all across the country, until reasonable equality in political posts is attained. The North of Nigeria must not continue to embarrass the rest of Nigeria with its non recognition of women as human beings worthy of holding positions of leadership in this 21st century.
INEC Chairman was dishonest in stating that a court order directed it to include APC in those Zamfara stste elections. This is a summary of the contrived court order that INEC relied upon to include APC
“Justice Abdul Aboki who led a 3 man Panel of Justices of the Court of Appeal held that the trial judge, Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu, of the Federal High Court lacked the requisite jurisdiction to entertain the suit in the first place since the suit was filed outside the 14 days required by law.”
With the above reason, nothing there empowered INEC to overlook its initial disqualification of APC because Justice Ojukwu issued no order against APC, she merely refused to grant the plaintiff’s (APC) requests to be included in the election. In other words, even though she should not have entertained the case, her decision did not order INEC to do anything, it just did not honor the plaintiff’s’ request, which was exactly what the court of appeal indirectly declared too. INEC fraudulently (probably due to pressure from the presidency) to interpret the appeal court’s ruling as mandating it to include APC in the election. I was stunned that no lawyer in Nigeria raised hell over that atrocious interpretation of the Court of Appeal’s decision — not even the opposition parties’ lawyers.
The Nigerian Supreme Court deserves absolute respect and commendation for issuing this ruling; it is so loud and unambiguous that political parties would brace up in the future.