Court orders, coming close to election schedules, will not make the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, postpone election.
This position was made known on Thursday by the Chairman of INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, during a National Stakeholders’ Forum for 2019 General Elections in Abuja.
He said although the electoral body had been receiving conflicting or contradicting, that would not lead to postponing election.
He said there was a contingency plan in case some of the orders came close to the elections so that it would not affect the election schedules.
According to him, INEC would go by the latest order.
He said that in a case where there were two judgements on the same day, the Commission had to take a decision.
His words: “If two courts make a pronouncement on a matter, we go by the latest in time.
“In the case of one of the judgments, the two judgements came on the same day; the Commission has to take a decision.
“My assurance to stakeholders and Nigerians is that INEC will always obey court order.
“The next question we are going to ask is that what if the court order comes close to election, will INEC postpone elections?
“No. INEC does not intend to postpone any election.
“We will operate based on the order that we received but the Commission has also made contingency plan in case some of the orders come close to the elections.
“We should be able to recover and conduct elections as scheduled.”
Yakubu spoke about how contentious the party congresses and primaries had been ahead of the coming general election.
He said: “INEC has been dragged to court 640 times on the conduct of parties primaries.”
He added that INEC had received 540 requests for certified true copies of documents and some of the cases would end up in court.
“In addition, we received 186 protests and petitions for the conduct of congresses and party primaries,” he said.
Speaking on the preparedness of INEC, he said the commission was ready.
He said the commission was working with all the necessary agencies, especially security to ensure a successful election.
