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Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has ruled out rejecting the All Progressives Congress, APC presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, over the controversy trailing his certificates.
The commission said yesterday that it has no basis to object to the affidavit Buhari presented on the circumstances surrounding his certificates.
It said the commission lacks the mandate to screen or reject candidates, adding that its job was basically to display political parties’ candidates for claims and objections.
INEC however said that when there are objections, it will revert to the parties to address the situation.
Gen. Buhari had failed to submit his certificates and credentials to INEC on the ground that the documents were with the military authorities.
In an affidavit dated November 24, 2014 which he deposed to before an Abuja High Court, Buhari explained that his certificates were with the military board.
Commenting on the development yesterday in Abuja, the Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Kayode Idowu, said: “When parties file the nominees, the law requires that INEC should display those nominees for claims and objections. If objections are made to those claims the commission reverts to the parties because the statutory mandate is on the parties to nominate their candidates not for INEC to choose their candidates for them.
“INEC will have to revert to the political party and say there is a challenge with the credentials or the criteria that you have cited for any particular nominee and ask them to do the needful either to address the issue or verify to see whether or not it is truth. It is their job so they have to sort it out before they present their candidates. So the commission has no role in disqualifying candidates.”
On whether if there was an objection on candidate for not submitting the necessary credentials to INEC, Idowu said: “I don’t see the basis for that objection,” adding that candidates must submit all the credentials demanded.
On a situation where the credentials are unavailable, Idowu retorted: “Don’t put words in my mouth. We don’t have this situation only in INEC. It happens everywhere, people submit affidavit. It is not new. You submit affidavit, attestation in place of original certificate. Even your National Youth Service Corps, NYSC certificate you submit affidavit where you don’t have the original.”
Asked whether INEC had reverted to the APC on the Buhari issue, he replied: “I am not aware of any issue that the commission should revert to.”
He explained that the commission was unaware of a challenge over the issue, asking “are you the one challenging? Let us not preempt issues that will not come up. I don’t want to do anticipatory issue because it has not arisen.”
Speaking on the certificates Buhari submitted for the 2011 elections, Idowu said he was not prepared to speak on individual candidates, adding that it was better for Nigerians “to abuse me on this one than for INEC to be drawn into partisan squabbles. You are just dragging INEC to an unnecessary issue. INEC is a dispassionate level headed, neutral umpire that is using the rules to do its job. So, what to do is drag INEC to join issues, you are inadvertently dragging INEC to partisan phrase.”
He remarked that under the guidelines for submission of candidates as contained in Section 87 of the Electoral Act, there is a provision for sworn affidavit of personal particulars of form CF01.
According to him, INEC does not screen candidates because it does not reject candidates, stressing that the commission only sees what the candidates had submitted and display them for claims and objections and thereafter takes up emerging issues with the parties.
Idowu described the redeployment of Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs as a long standing policy of the commission to avoid creating grounds for people to fault election outcomes.
He denied the allegations that the commission posted the RECs to their states of origin. He said INEC only deployed them to the contiguous states to avoid creating problems of acculturation for them.
NAN
