INEC set to register APC, visits headquarters

[Mirror]

...appoints Ogakwu as Secretary

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has taken a step further towards registering the All Progressive Congress, APC, with a formal inspection of the national headquarters of the party in Abuja yesterday.

But the African Peoples Congress, the party which shares acronym with the APC has alleged a backdoor plot by the leadership of INEC to register the party this Friday in spite of an existing litigation in court challenging the ownership of the acronym.

The INEC team led by the Director of Political Party Monitoring and Liaison, Shittu Ibrahim, was conducted round the offices in the party headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday.

APC National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, told journalists that the party has already been approved but with the visit of INEC, what remains is the official proclamation of the party.

He said: "From the beginning of this merger negotiation, we have gone to various conventions, we have made joint applications and we have been exchanging correspondence with INEC, but they have never visited us before. So, today, INEC came to see us in our home, and they are happy we have got a home. When INEC team met us through our attendance register, they discovered that we belonged to a party of gentlemen, APC.

"INEC has never faulted what we did; when we wrote the first joint application, we have completed the merger phase of the exercise. INEC now needs administrative investigation to show that what we have done was according to their own laid down procedures and because of that, they kept writing to us and we were replying them. Today, they came for verifications as to whether we exist, and where do we exist?

We have proved to them that we exist like gentlemen and in a befitting accommodation.

"We have always been confident that no power under the sun will stop us from becoming a political party." On how soon the coalition expects APC to be registered, Akande said the law is clear about it, adding that the party is already registered.

But in a statement by the other APC Legal Adviser, Kingsley Nnadi, the party accused INEC of effectively aligning with APC, insisting that the development was capable of plunging Nigeria's democratic process into chaos.

He said INEC is sufficiently aware of the fact that the African Peoples Congress (APC) is legitimately pursuing a judicial review of the Commission's decision to reject its application for registration in the court of law, yet its actions convey an outrageous aversion to the tenets of the rule of law.

Meanwhile, INEC has appointed Mrs. Augusta Chinwe Ogakwu, as the commission's Secretary. She replaces Abdullahi A. Kaugama, who retired on June 26.

A statement by Kayode Idowu, the Chief Press Secretary to INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said Ogakwu's appointment was approved at the end of the commission's meeting held in Abuja yesterday.

National Mirror