You Lack Power to Dictate to INEC on Planned LG Election, Osun APC Warns PDP

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

The Osun State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has cautioned the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) Chapter in the state to stop arrogating to itself the power to instruct an independent statutory body like the Osun State Independent Electoral Commission (OSSIEC) on when it would organise local government elections.

The State Chairman of the APC, Mr. Gboyega Famodun, in a statement that was issued by his Media Adviser, Mr. Kola Olabisi, in Osogbo, the Osun State, capital yesterday, said that the PDP lacked the power or authority to dictate to an independent body like the OSSIEC that derived its creation and existence from the Electoral Act 2022.

Famodun reminded the state chapter of the PDP that the symbiotic relationship between the INEC and the OSSIEC is not a master and servant type but mainly advisory in status.

He stated that it is absurd and unheard of for a body of supposed learned men under the aegis of the PDP to be dictating to the INEC to refuse the OSSIEC the lawful official privileges required to function effectively for the purpose of its creation.

In Famodun’s words: “If the statement credited to the Osun PDP that the INEC should deny the OSSIEC the updated voters register is anything to go by, it is suggestive of the fact that the PDP is sponsoring, oiling and encouraging an avoidable heating up of the polity in the state.

“Do we need to educate the PDP handlers that in a decent and real democratic society, the court is always there to adjudicate on any constitutional matter?

“With this directive of the Osun PDP to the INEC to refuse to make available to the OSSIEC the state updated voters register for the purpose of the conduct of the local government election on October 15, 2022, it is nothing but a clear case of instigating an independent Federal Government agency to overreach itself for self-serving reasons.

“It is strange that the Osun PDP is contemporaneously playing the role of a complainant and the judge by dictating to the INEC a punishment for the OSSIEC, which seems a complete anathema to the law of the land.

“Osun State is a subset of the nation which cannot and should not operate in its endeavours at variance with what is operational in the other states making up the corporate nation.” 

The Osun State APC’s chairman conclusively submitted that such directive by the state PDP to the INEC not to release the updated voters list to the OSSIEC for the purpose of conducting of a free, fair and credible local government election is reckless, misleading, diversionary and unlawful and should be disregarded in its entirety.