Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
The ruling party insisted that Ahmad Lawan, the Senate President, and Senator Godswill Akpabio would still be its candidates in the 2023 elections despite INEC’s refusal to acknowledge, accept, or publish their names as senatorial candidates. Akpabio was a former governor of Akwa Ibom State.
Festus Okoye, the National Commissioner for Information and Chairman of Voter Education for INEC, recently declared that the organization has not recognized the pair.
“For the record, neither of the two persons has been approved by the commission as a senatorial candidate. For the avoidance of doubt, the form that political parties upload to the INEC nomination portal is known as Form EC9 (submission of names of candidates by political parties).
The title of the form, which was received on June 17, 2022, when the portal closed, makes this quite plain. The next step is the release of the nominated candidates’ personal information, which was completed a week later. He continued, “The panel did not disclose the forms of the two people in question.
Lawan and Akpabio, however, are the party’s known senatorial candidates for Yobe North and Akwa Ibom North-West, respectively, according to Felix Morka, the party’s national publicity secretary, who spoke with Track News yesterday.
He stated, “The party is the party, and the party held its primaries and presented its list of candidates to INEC. Godswill Akpabio is the representative for Akwa Ibom North West, and Ahmad Lawan is the Senate President for Yobe North.
When asked why Machina, who won the Yobe North East, was removed from the race, the APC national publicity writer declined to speak further, pointing out that a court matter was still pending.
The last I heard, according to Morka, they were in court right now. Since they are in court, I won’t comment. I’ll like to leave it at that; I’ve already stated that Lawan is our senatorial candidate. I do not want to be questioned about that any further while they are in court.
On Monday, Machina had denied quitting the ruling party or withdrawing for Lawan.
Lawan finished last in his party’s presidential primary, but Machina had already run in and won the Yobe North senatorial primary, which Lawan represents in the National Assembly.
