Igini: INEC Has Power to Reject Parties’ Nominations

Former INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner for Akwa Ibom State,  Mike Igini, in this interview with Udora Orizu, speaks on the controversy trailing Akwa Ibom North Senatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress, among other issues, Excerpts:

You were recently reported to have said  the President and National Assembly should be commended for enacting the 2022 Electoral Act, how will it impact the 2023 elections?

The Act has secured INEC innovations and procedures by returning power to the people at the polling units where elections will now be won or lost and not at Wards, LGAs and other stages or points of result collation. The most profound and empowering provision is the mandatory requirement of the law that the total number of votes scored by candidates and the number of accredited voters be uploaded to the digital cloud in an INEC portal that is accessible to voters and participating political parties.

Staying on your last statement, INEC National Commissioner Haruna Mohammed has said that, you misinterpreted the Electoral Act as it affects the Akwa-Ibom North Senatorial District, how do you react to that?

First, I am very surprised that Mohammed Haruna, someone that l used to respect so much as a columnist before his appointment as a national commissioner who ought to know better, could go to the media to attack my person and question my legal competency because of Akpabio that he kept mentioning throughout the write up and he did that totally in ignorance of the true position of the law.

He accused me of “choosing and picking” provisions of the 2022 Act that suits me over this same man and other politicians he was advancing their position.

A supposed umpire defending individuals that did not participate in a senatorial primary against the provisions of the 2022 Electoral Act, that such individuals should be confirmed as senatorial candidates, as he has confirmed again in his latest attack on me and  Mr Femi Falana (SAN). I’m only disappointed but not surprised.

l have seen things and the best and worst characters of human beings in the last ten years of public service. An individual could be a great critic and a respected columnist when he is not in government and there are many out there that we have come to know as pretenders. If the wind had not blown, we would not have seen the rump of the Chicken. The true character of a person will be revealed when you give him or her position of authority to exercise power. So, power does not change people as we think but rather It reveals their true character that has been hidden under the garb of being a critic.

What provision of the Act did he specifically accuse you of picking and choosing?

In the first interview he granted that was widely publicized in June while trying to respond to a United States based columnist, Dr Kperogi, he claimed that INEC does not have the statutory power to reject individuals who did not go through primary elections but whose names were submitted by political parties anyway, without citing any provision of the law to back up his false claim.

What he said is wholly incorrect  because by virtue of section 84(13) the Commission has undoubted power to reject individuals submitted as candidates that didn’t undergo primary elections monitored by INEC and did not emerge from a valid primary under section 29 of the 2022 Electoral Act. That power to reject by the Commission could also be challenged either by any aspirant or the political party under section 285 (14) of the constitution.

Which means he is totally wrong for accusing you of picking and choosing the law that suits you?

Absolutely, I will prefer to say that he is ignorant of the law, which in itself does not excuse the egregious nature of his conduct given that he should be better advised or seek better advise that is available to him or can be made available to him in the Commission, if he spent more time at his job as gatekeeper of electoral regulatory law.

He admitted this shortcoming in his response to Dr Kperogi who drew his attention to the position of Mr Falana that l was right on the position of law. And this  was what Haruna himself  wrote “I had agreed that the Senior Advocate was right and l was wrong because my opinion did not take section 84 (13) of the electoral Act 2022 into consideration” , so you can see how unfair Haruna has been to me using his own opinion which is not law to challenge and attack me in the media when l cited copiously the provisions of sections 29, 31, 33, 34 and 84 of the 2022 Act that a political party intending to field candidates for election must not only conduct party primaries that shall be monitored but that unlike previous Acts, political parties no longer have power to whimsically change candidates that have emerged from party primaries.

Tragically, Commissioner Mohammed Haruna, defended Akpabio and others that he repeatedly mentioned their names in his interview in total ignorance of the law. Why should an umpire rely on his opinion which is free whereas facts are sacred to dance naked in the public ?  l decided not to respond to him publicly the first time for misleading Nigerians but instead called him to express my disappointment to him that assuming l was even wrong which was not the case, he should have spoken to me privately instead of going to media to disparage me in ignorance.

I reinstated the correct position of the law to him to be well guided given that he is not a lawyer but a very cerebral journalist that people like me used to respect so much in the past.

Even as a lawyer, l don’t know all the laws and God forbid that a lawyer should know all the laws. But a lawyer should know where to find the law just as an educated non lawyer like Mohammed Haruna that wants to challenge a lawyer and even a senior Advocate of Nigeria like Femi Falana, a legal luminary of remarkable intellectual prowess, he should know where to find the law to engage well.

What do you think could be responsible for this personal attack on your person?

Frankly, I really don’t know why and l have been asking myself if may be because out of respect for him and the image of INEC that should not be brought to disrepute, having to respond to him publicly and I restrained myself coupled with numerous calls from colleagues and well-meaning Nigerians that appealed to me not to respond to him, perhaps my restraint misguidedly emboldened him to embark on this second unprovoked and unjustified attack on my person. Repeating the attack on me again because of these persons will not go unanswered because it may give well-meaning members of the public the erroneous impression that the Commission shares such ignorant opinions as axiomatic praxis, which is not true.

What really are his specific accusations of you this time?

This time around he not only accused me ignorantly of not obeying what he called a “federal High court judgment” which is not true because he doesn’t have the full facts. For the avoidance of doubt here are the facts about the contrived APC crisis in Akwa lbom, that Haruna dabbled into without knowing the full facts, sequence and dates of all that happened.

The APC in Akwa-Ibom state had a successful State Congress on 16th October 2021 wherein all the notable key stakeholders were present. There are video recordings and pictures of all those who were present at the Sheergrace Arena venue of the congress and staff of the Commission from Abuja and state monitored the exercise.

At the end, one Augustine Ekanem emerged for the position of state Chairman after polling 1,278 votes.

However, another aspirant and the last on the list of ten contestants, Stephen Leo Ntuekpo, who scored 006 (6) votes altered the result by dropping figure one (1) from the 1,278 and placed it behind his own 006 to now read 1,006 while the scores of the real winner of the congress reduced to 278 votes in the forged document. This was the document he made himself that he took to INEC for certification and used same to sue the APC national body under the then acting chairman of their party Governor Mai Buni of Yobe state and Secretary, Senator Akpan Udoedehe who is now in NNPP.

INEC Headquarters EPM and Legal department surprisingly certified for this document  despite having the original of the successful congress report in its custody right with them at Headquarters.

When my attention was drawn to the criminal action, when I received a protest letter and I immediately called the head office.

In response, the commission wrote a letter to the APC National secretary to invalidate the forged Congress result certified as an error. In paragraph 4 of the letter it stated thus “Note that the certification in custody of the Commission in compliance with the law does not confer validity on that document that is otherwise invalid or void by virtue of the provision of the law” .

Is Commissioner Haruna aware of this letter written, dated 1st February 2022 and signed by the secretary of the Commission?

That was the document Ntuekpo used to secure a Federal High Court Judgment on 17th March 2022 that Haruna is defending vigorously. But he was never sworn in as State Party Chairman for APC in Akwa Ibom State by the then APC Acting National chairman and Secretary both of whom in their official capacity immediately proceeded to the Appeal court on the 18th of March and filed a stay of execution of the judgment obtained by Mr Ntuekpo.

When the matter came up on the 7th April, the appeal court granted an order for parties to maintain status quo and adjourned till 17th of April. The status quo ordered to be maintained at the time was the fact that Augustine Ekanem was the only duly sworn-in chairman, while Stephen Ntuekpo only had a judgment that was in his favor but was never sworn in as chairman given that the APC leadership that would have conferred him with authority appealed against the judgment.

It was not a case of two claimants chairmen who were sworn into office in which case we could be talking of the invocation of the principle of the latter in time.

But surprisingly, just four days after the Appeal court adjourned after granting an order that status quo be maintained till the next adjourned date of 17th April, this court of appeal order was disregarded and the new chairman of APC, Senator Adamu Abdullahi and Secretary Senator Iyiola Omisore respectively on the 11th April sworn in Stephen Ntuekpo in total disobedience to the order of the court of appeal.

And in order to avoid the likely sanction of the court for contempt, the same appeallant ambushed the Appeal court by filing a Notice of withdrawal of the matter their predecessor took to Appeal court against Stephen Ntuekpo.

But the order of Appeal court was still subsisting irrespective of their action. It was during the prevailing extant order to maintain status quo from the 7th April all through the 26th May when the APC governorship primary ought to have been conducted but was not conducted except for the senatorial primary that was conducted on the 27th of May 2022 that produced retired DIG Ekpoudom. It was conducted by the APC and monitored by the Commission with full report. The process of sudden withdrawal to prevent the hearing of the main matter after all they have achieved the goal of swearing in someone  who used forged document.

That judicial process was only concluded on the 30th of May at which time all primaries have been concluded. It should be noted that from 17th of March when Stephen Ntuekpo obtained judgement with a forged/altered result certified regrettably in Abuja, the state office never received any letter from Abuja directing the state office to obey any federal High court ruling that we disobeyed contrary to what Mohammed Haruna claimed.

But  Haruna seems to suggest that Akpabio’s re-run or re-conducted senatorial election was monitored.

I challenge Haruna to produce the names of those staff of INEC either from Abuja or at the state that monitored that senatorial primary he is talking about and defending vigorously. We are lawyers and we deal with records. There are official records with dates and sequence of events from INEC monitoring officers to the INEC Headquarters in Abuja.

We had Resident Electoral Commissioners meeting at the Commission Headquarters on Wednesday 8th and  Thursday 9th of June.

I woke up on Friday morning to see on social media what they called breaking news that Akpabio had won a re-run senatorial election for Akwa Ibom North west. I was inundated with calls from everywhere to confirm the story and l responded to the effect that there was nothing like that because it had been conducted since the 27th of May, and hence  the North West senatorial train had left the station.

I went further to explain that a re-run election means that there was a previous exercise that may have been cancelled, and who cancelled the first election and for what reason? And in any case, in a re-run election in line with the judgment of the supreme judgment as per Labor vs INEC that people like Mohammed Haruna do not know, only those who participated in the cancelled one for any reason can participate and no new entrant to the race can be included.

The man commissioner Haruna wants to be a candidate never contested the 27th May senatorial primary but at all material time was a presidential aspirant that took place on the 8th of June, 2022 this is not my opinion, it is a fact in public domain. 

Haruna also expressed opinion that you and Falana  misinterpreted the provision of section 115 of the Act that no offence had been committed by any politician.

There he goes again, but this time his opinion is based on his understanding of a provision of law. But is Commissioner Haruna a judge and even a lawyer to be saying categorically that lawyers misinterpreted the law. Some of the provisions you find in the extant 2022 Act like the section 115 are meant to deal with past mischief by politicians who buy more than one nomination form with the hope that if they don’t succeed in their party primary election, they will go to the other party they have purchased their nomination form to be a candidate and contest the same election thereby causing confusion everywhere over-heating the polity. This has led to the growing culture of people jumping from one party to another in matter of days within the same period of primaries. It is to put an end to this that the novel section 115 was proposed.

We are all witnesses to the problems, how when senatorial primaries long conducted on 27th May are being reopened after the presidential convention that took place in June. This is the situation section 115 was proposed to prevent and to cure for there to be sanity but people like Haruna are doing the opposite with politicians who carry on as if there is no law in the country.

 In any case, who is Mohammed Haruna to be saying we interpreted the law? Is he aware that it was after l drew the attention of the public to the consequences of this section 115  on Tuesday the 19th of July as well Falana  and other senior lawyers that two days after precisely on Friday the 22nd Of July this year that a federal High court sitting in Abakilliki in Ebonyi state ruled on this provision and upheld our position. No appeallate court to the best of my knowledge has made a contrary prouncement on that section 115 that Haruna is saying we misinterpreted. 

Again, unless and until people understand the mischief every proposed provision in the 2022 Act is intended to cure, people like Haruna will continue to substitute their opinion for the law. The truth that section 115 was proposed to deter people from, purchasing, filling and signing two nomination forms aspiring to be a candidate in more than one constituency (Presidential or Senatorial) which are different constituencies election as an offence punishable on conviction for two years imprisonment.

The old Forms CF001 and CFOO2 have now been changed to Forms EC9 and EC9b and they are issued or given free to political parties by INEC. No individual who has emerged as a candidate will ever fill two forms after emerging as a candidate to be penalized. It is those expensive nomination forms sold by political parties to aspirants that aspire to be candidates that section 115 is intended to deal with and not INEC forms filled after emerging as candidates.

If it’s INEC’s free forms then of course nobody will ever commit the offence prescribed.

So you see, it is a regulatory mechanisms to make the regulatory role of the Commission easier to accomplish, and advance internal party democracy for political parties while consolidating democracy in Nigeria, no election manager will therefore take public positions to go against the Commission’s competence to administer such provisions to advance the partisan position of third parties outside INEC as he is doing.