President Muhammadu Buhari has insisted that the All Progressives Congress, APC, convention will hold in a matter of weeks.
This is contrary to INEC’s position in its letter to the APC, where it declared that a convention or a meeting cannot be allowed to hold without an initial 21 days notice to the commission. The commission in a statement said such would be violating the electoral Act.
Another reason given by INEC is that the letter it received from the APC was not signed by the recognized leader of the party.
But the APC had insisted that a 21-day notice was earlier issued to INEC, hence there is no issue with the March 26, 2022 convention.
This was contained in the briefing by Ismaeel Ahmed, youth representative and spokesperson of the caretaker/extraordinary convention planning committee (CECPC). According to him, Tahir Maman, who is in charge of APC’s legal department, would respond specifically to the issue of INEC’s response on the NEC meeting.
“APC national convention would hold on March 26. I’m not only a youth leader, I’m also a lawyer. We served a notice to INEC for the 26th of February earlier,” he said.
Following the same position, President Buhari in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Garba Shehu, insisted that the convention must hold as scheduled.
He said: “When precisely the party’s convention is held and who is the party’s chairman is hardly a matter for the average voter: vastly more important is who convention delegates will elect as the party’s flagbearer in the coming weeks to take forward the party’s platform to the people in the general election in February next year.”
INEC is yet to respond to the president’s position.
