Nigeria’s electoral body, INEC, has justified its reason for excluding the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the revised list of candidates for the Anambra governorship election.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission had on Thursday excluded the PDP from a revised list of candidates for the November 6 governorship election.
Naija News reports that this is the second time INEC is excluding the PDP from the list of candidates for the election, after failing to include the party in the first list released on July 16.
In an interview with Channels Television on Friday, INEC spokesman, Festus Okoye, said the commission excluded the PDP from the list due to an ongoing court case.
He stated that an Appeal Court had ruled that the commission should not publish the name of any PDP candidate until the determination of the suit.
Okoye added that it refused to include the party in the list because the candidate’s name uploaded on the Commission portal is different from the name affirmed by an Anambra High Court.
He, however, stated that the PDP’s candidate would be added to the list after the determination of the suit at the Appeal Court. appeal.
Okoye said: “In relation to the PDP, what happened was that the PDP as a political party uploaded the name and personal particulars of a particular candidate to our nomination portal, and that was the candidate whose name the commission published.
“Thereafter, there was also another court judgement ordering and directing the PDP as a political party to submit the name of a different candidate as the candidate of the party.
“The PDP didn’t submit the name of that particular individual, and we can’t publish the name, unless the PDP submits the name of that individual.
“Thereafter, the matter went to the court of appeal and the court of appeal granted accelerated hearing in relation to the matter involving the PDP and its candidate, and then also ask the INEC not to publish the name of any of the candidates pending the final determination of the matter before the court of appeal.”
