A request has been submitted to the electoral commission for the extension of adequate documentation, submission, and registration of political party candidates as Nigerians draw nearer to the general elections in 2023.
The state chairman of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Apostle Dare Ojo, made the request on Friday in Ibadan, the capital city of Oyo state, during a press conference with journalists. He called for the extension of documentation, registration, and submission of names of candidates of political parties into the INEC portal, attributing the delay in the process to technological issues.
Ojo said, “INEC has done the best with this issue of submission of names and this electoral act of 2022 is very unique and we appreciate it, this will makes the political parties be on their toes and be committed, but one of the issues we are facing is this uploading of names of our candidates.”
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“INEC should not forget that this is the first time we are going to experience this which is very good but one thing we’ve discovered is that the issue technology we are using is giving us a lot of problems in uploading the names of our candidates, the time we have is not long enough for us to do all the registrations, we’ve discovered that most parties are yet to upload the names of their candidates due to the malfunctioning of the technology.”
“INEC has refused to give us enough time to fill in the names into their portal, our Senatorial Candidates, House of Rep candidates, we are expected to submit fourteen names of the federal honourable of each political party and as well as three names of senatorial candidates of each political parties to feature in the coming elections and up till now most parties don’t have any senatorial candidates, some also don’t have federal honorable candidates and it is not that they don’t have but they were unable to upload the names into INEC portal due to machine error, this issue if not properly address now can affect the credible elections we are clamouring for at the forthcoming elections.”
“In our own case it is not that we failed to upload the names from the state level, it is the duty of our national headquarters to do the job and it is a big job for them at the national level too because they have difficulties in uploading those names, when we complained to the national body of our party they said they have uploaded the names and submitted it to the INEC but it failed to submit on time due to the machine error and that is not our fault, we are not the only party affected, it is beyond our party, it is affecting other parties too.”
“What will INEC gain if the political parties are not given enough time to do proper documentation of the names of their candidates, the electoral act law stated that we should be given 90 days to elect to submit our names, this is affecting the majority of the parties that are preparing for coming general elections, INEC should reconsider their stand on this and give us time to do proper documentation of our candidates,” Ojo said.
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Apostle Dare Ojo who also doubles as the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) chairman in the state also debunked the defection rumour of his party members to the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.
