• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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2023: Lawan losses senate return bid, Akpabio secures ticket

Lawan and Akpabio

Ahmad Lawan, president of the Nigerian Senate has lost his bid to return to the red chamber of the National Assembly after an unsuccessful presidential attempt on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Unlike Lawan, Godswill Akpabio, the former governor of Akwa-Ibom who also had botched presidential bid, has, through a court order, secured his party’s ticket to contest for the Akwa-Ibom North-West senatorial district in next year’s polls.

This followed the release of the final list of presidential and National Assembly candidates for the 2023 general elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday.

While the list showed that APC has no candidate for the Yobe North senatorial district which the Senate president has been dragging with Bashir Machina, it indicated that the former Niger Delta Affairs minister is the candidate for Akwa-Ibom North-West.

Both Lawan and Akpabio had contested for the APC presidential ticket but while the former lost to Bola Tinubu, the latter stepped down for him.

However, the Abdullahi Adamu-led national leadership of the party submitted their names to the INEC as candidates for the Yobe North and Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial election in 2023, respectively.

BusinessDay had earlier reported that INEC documents showed that Machina is the duly nominated candidate of APC for Yobe North senatorial district which is being claimed by Lawan.

In a certified true copy (CTC) of the report of INEC officials that monitored the primary election and signed by Omale Samuel, dated May 28, 2022, Machina scored 289 votes out of the 300 delegates that participated in the exercise.

For Akwa Ibom North-West, Udom Ekpoudom, a retired deputy inspector general of police had won the ticket before the APC leadership substituted him with Akpabio.

But last week, the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered INEC to accept and publish Akpabio’s name as the candidate of the APC for the Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial.

The court reportedly held that INEC acted illegally by refusing to accept and publish Akpabio’s name since it was sent to the election commission by the APC.

INEC had refused to recognise Akpabio as a candidate because the commission did not monitor the APC primary which he claimed to have won.

The list released by INEC also has Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima as presidential and vice presidential candidate of the APC; Atiku Abubakar and Ifeanyi Okowa as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential standard bearer, Peter Obi and Yusuf Datti as the Labour Party flag bearers, among the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the 18 political parties.

Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner and chairman, information and voter education committee, said all the 18 political parties have fielded candidates and their running mates for the presidential election.

Okoye in a statement accompanying the list, said for legislative elections, 1,101 candidates are vying for 109 senatorial seats and 3,122 candidates for House of Representatives seats, making a total of 4,223 candidates contesting for 469 legislative positions.

“In terms of gender distribution, 3,875 candidates are male, made up of 35 for presidential and vice presidential, 1,008 for Senate and 2,832 for House of Representatives. Similarly, 381 females comprising 1 for presidential, 92 for Senate, and 288 for House of Representatives are contesting. There are also 11 persons with disability (PWDs) in the race.

Read also: INEC debunks report of denying 7m Nigerians registration

“The list for specific constituencies is published in each state where they are located while the comprehensive nationwide list has been uploaded to the commission’s website.

“We appeal to all political parties to channel any observations on the list of candidates to the Commission and such must be signed by the National Chairman and Secretary of the political party and supported with an affidavit as provided in section 32(2) of the Electoral Act 2022.

“The publication of the full names and addresses of all nominated candidates follows the political parties’ conduct of primaries and completion of the nomination exercise. Nigerians may recall that at the end of the process, the personal particulars of all nominated candidates were displayed in their constituencies nationwide as provided by section 29(3) of the Electoral Act.

“Subsequently, validly nominated candidates had the opportunity to voluntarily withdraw their candidature by notice in writing and personally deliver such notice to the political party that nominated them for the election.

Thereafter, political parties substituted such candidates under section 31 of the Electoral Act for which the last day was 15th July 2022 for national elections and 12th August 2022 for state elections as clearly provided in item 6 of the commission’s Timetable and Schedule of Activities. Thereafter, no withdrawal or substitution of candidates is allowed except in the event of death as provided in section 34(1) of the Electoral Act or pursuant to an order of a Court of competent jurisdiction.

“The list published today contains the names of candidates validly nominated for national elections at the close of party primaries and the period earmarked for withdrawal and substitution of candidates. The final list of candidates for state elections (governorship and state constituencies) will be published on 4th October 2022 as already indicated on the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the 2023 General Election.

“We note the fact that not all the political parties conducted primaries in all the constituencies, submitted the particulars of candidates that emerged from valid primaries or substituted their candidates after fresh primaries within 14 days as provided in section 33 of the Electoral Act.

“This has led to numerous litigations, some of which are ongoing. Where the commission was served with court orders by aggrieved aspirants or candidates before the publication of this list, these have been indicated under the remark column,” the statement read in parts.