The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has dismissed claims that it was partisan in handing the failed recall of the Senator representing Kogi Central, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.
Earlier on Thursday, INEC rejected the petition to recall Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan, saying that it has not met the requirements.
The electoral commission said the petition to recall Senator Natasha did not meet constitutional requirements.
Speaking during an appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, the Chief Press Secretary to the Chairman of INEC, Rotimi Oyekanmi, explained how the Commission handled the process.
He said, “In the case of the Kogi Central District, we received a petition and a cover letter and of course what Nigerians were saying was that we were taking sides.
“But what happened was that in the covering letter, the representatives of the petitioners did not include their address as required in our regulations and guidelines and what we just did was to ask them to supply their address, it has nothing to do with the petition.
“And of course, there is nowhere in the law where INEC is asked to reject a petition just because the cover letter did not contain the address. So, there was no hanky-panky in what we did.”
Asked whether there could be a repeat of the recall process, the INEC spokesperson said the law did not specify if the process could be repeated and how many times.
“The law just talks about the threshold, the threshold meaning that if you want to recall, you must have, in addition to your petition, 50 per cent plus one signatures. The law did not specify how many times you can undertake that,” he said.
