Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Joash Amupitan yesterday rejected accusation of bias leveled at him and the commission following its withdrawal of recognition of the national executive committee of the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC).
Amupitan,a Law professor and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), insisted that the INEC decision was in strict compliance with a recent order of the Court of Appeal that the status quo ante bellum be maintained in the leadership tussle in the ADC.
The INEC chairman has come under attack since Monday when the commission announced the decision with former Senate President David Mark who leads a faction of the party dismissing the INEC’s decision as unlawful and a threat to Nigeria’s democracy.
He called for the dissolution of the management of INEC,and vowed that ADC would proceed with its National Convention scheduled for Abuja on April 14.
Amupitan, in an interview on ARISE Television yesterday ,sought to disprove the ADC’s claims.
Giving his own account of what led to the position of the commission, he said INEC “didn’t just take a decision. We didn’t just wake up one day and took this decision. There was something that led to it. There was an order of court.”
He said the orders of the Court of Appeal relied upon by INEC were “very clear to the extent that first, in view of the fact that INEC had already released the timetable for election, the trial judge was directed and ordered to proceed with the case expeditiously. That is, the court granted accelerated hearing.
“ The second is the one which is now causing controversy and that is the specific order that parties should maintain status quo ante bellum. It did not just stop at that. It also ordered that parties should not do anything that will put a fate accompli on the trial court and that parties should not do anything that will render the proceedings before the trial court nugatory. Those were the definite orders of the court of appeal. It was delivered on the 12th of March and before you know it, people started calling me that INEC had been ordered to remove David Mark’s name. I said I cannot act on social media reports. I looked at it and discovered that it was an interlocutory appeal that had been dismissed and ordinarily, we should be talking about going for the substantive trial.”
Continuing, the INEC chairman said that soon after the Court of Appeal’s order, counsel to the two sides sent him letters giving conflicting interpretations of different orders.
He recalled how he met with the legal department to find a solution to the stalemate and how he called for the file on the Court of Appeal’s judgement and the nature of the order granted by the court of appeal.
“The Court of Appeal stated clearly and ordered that status quo ante bellum must be maintained,” he said.
Asked about the threat by the David Mark group to proceed with the planned national convention of ADC later this month regardless of the Court of Appeal’s order, Amupitan warned that it was a risky venture.
He said: “if they are going ahead with their congress, with their convention, it’s left for them to look at it, whether it is in contravention of the court.
“Don’t do anything. Don’t take any step that will render any proceeding before the court nugatory.
“So, if already they are asking that don’t do any congress, don’t do any convention, it is a relief that is being claimed. And especially they filed a motion for that purpose, that motion has not been determined.
“Let me tell you what happened in Zamfara. It happened in the past. We don’t want to conduct an election without this early warning, and at the end of the day, after you have won, the court again will come and declare the election invalid. And the implication is that the person with the second highest number of vote will be declared the winner.”
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