The Independent National Electoral
Commission says it has received court papers in a case filed by Senator
Dino Melaye to stop it from verifying the signatures of members of his
constituency who are asking the Senate to sack him.
The commission said that the court papers were served on it in Abuja on Wednesday.
The Director of Publicity and Voter
Education at the commission, Mr. Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, who spoke with our
correspondent on the telephone, said the commission would study the
court papers before taking a position on it.
“We have received the court papers. The
commission was served on Wednesday. We are going to study the papers
before knowing what to do. The papers do not mean that we are going to
stop what we are doing now. However, we need to study them before
knowing what we are going to do,” he said.
It will be recalled that the commission
had last Saturday told our correspondent that it merely read the story
on the suit filed by Melaye in the media, adding that it would not rely
on newspaper publications to do its job.
The commission, therefore, said it would
proceed with the programmes it had lined up for the verification of
signatures of the voters who asked the senator to return home.
But Melaye’s lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), told our correspondent that the case was actually filed last week Friday.
He said the court might not have been
able to serve the commission earlier because “Friday is usually observed
as half-working day in Abuja and in other government agencies.
“This is because the workers go for
prayers and probably go home from there. So, if the commission said we
didn’t serve it earlier, it might be correct.”
The commission, after reviewing the case
filed by Melaye, is expected to make a pronouncement if the exercise
will commence on July 3, when it is expected to release the timetable
for the verification of the signatures.
Melaye had in his suit marked,
FHC/ABJ/CS/587/2017, filed before the Federal High Court in Abuja,
described the recall petitions as fictitious.
INEC had on Thursday last week written a
letter to Melaye to inform him about the demand by the people of his
constituency to recall him from the Senate.
Kogi West, which Melaye represents in the Senate, has seven local governments areas.
Signatures and petitions from each of
the local government areas were packaged in seven bags, which were
tagged according to the names of the local governments, and submitted to
the commission.
The local governments and the percentage
of voters who signed the recall petition showed that Yagba West had the
highest number of voters asking Melaye to return home from the Senate.
The breakdown, as shown in the petition
is: Yagba West, 55.7 per cent; Lokoja, 54.8 per cent ; Kogi, 52.77 per
cent; Yagba East, 52 per cent; Ijumu (Melaye’s local government), 51.8
per cent; Mopa/Moro, 50.4 per cent and Kabba/ Bunu, 46.7 per cent.
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