The deregistered political parties have
commenced legal actions against the Independent National Electoral
Commission with one of the affected parties asking an Abuja Federal High Court
to imprison the INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega.
Chairman of another deregistered party said he
heard about the deregistration of his party on the television as a “Breaking
News,” and alleged that Jega, by the deregulation announced last Thursday, had
committed an infringement of a court order for which he must go to jail.
But spokesperson for the INEC boss, Kayode Idowu,
said on Monday that Jega acted after the discovery that he had no legal
restrictions.
One of the de-registered political parties, Hope
Democratic Party, asked the Abuja Federal High Court to summon Jega “to show
cause why he should not be committed to prison for contempt of court or attempt
to ridicule and or pre-empt the court” by announcing the de-registration of the
political parties on December 6, 2012.
In an exparte motion dated December 10, 2012, HDP
and two of its members, Chief Samuel Wogu and Hon. Ezekiel Don Peters, also
asked the court to set aside the INEC press statement which announced the
de-registration of the 28 political parties.
The plaintiffs’ action, which was filed by their
counsel, Chief A. A. Owuru, was informed by a pending suit in which they had
earlier dragged INEC before the Abuja FHC to stop the Commission from
de-registering the party.
In the pending suit, filed on March 10, 2011, the
plaintiffs had asked the court for an order restraining INEC from
de-registering the political party until the case was heard and determined.
One Vivian Echebiri, in an affidavit in support
of the exparte motion in which the court was asked to summon Jega on contempt
charges, said INEC had consistently neglected to put up appearances in the
pending suit, despite the fact that the plaintiffs had served all court
processes and hearing notices on them.
The plaintiffs claimed that INEC opted to
de-register the 28 political parties, including HDP, in order to preempt the
outcome of the suit.
The pendwing suit was based on the plaintiffs’
claim that INEC unlawfully and wrongfully excluded the party’s candidates from
participating in the April 2011 general elections, a development which they
said prevented the party from winning any seat in the National Assembly.
They argued that by going ahead to de-register HDP
and the other 27 political parties, INEC would benefit from its own wrong and
punish the plaintiffs for its failures.
“The subject matter of this suit will be
destroyed if the defendants (INEC) are not sanctioned and reversed at this
stage irrespective of the outcome of this suit to uphold the integrity of this
Honourable Court,” they argued.
The presiding judge, Justice E. S. Chukwu, fixed
December 13, 2012 (tomorrow), to hear the exparte motion.
Meanwhile, the founding chairman and presidential
candidate of the African Liberation Party, Chief Emmanuel Osita Okereke, has
queried the deregistration of his party, the news of which he heard on the TV.
Okereke vowed that his party will challenge the decision in court.
“There was no correspondence, no meeting, and no
information. We just saw it (the deregistration) as breaking news on African
Independent Television that night and that was all. There is no
information yet. But we are going to tell Jega that this is Nigeria. INEC was
there before Jega became its chairman and INEC will be there after Jega’s exit.
If he thinks he is an empire we are going to tell him that we are ready to
demolish that empire,” Osita fumed in a telephone interview with our
correspondent on Monday.
He said the ALP had been in court against INEC
for over a year and Jega had been served all the relevant papers “but had
refused to appear in court.”
“When a matter is before a court of competent
jurisdiction, you don’t do anything until the court decides. By his
action, Jega has committed treason against the rule of law. I have told our
lawyer to file Order 48 for disobeying court order and we are going to commit
Jega to prison; he will serve a prison sentence,” he added.
But Idowu told our correspondent that the
commission took the decision after it discovered that none of the affected
parties had a case against the electoral body in court.
He said, “Sending somebody to prison is the
prerogative of the judge; the decisions were taken after there were clearer evidence
that there were no cases in court. For those that have cases in court, they
were left (alore). I don’t know of any of his (Okereke’s) cases in court. To
the best of my knowledge those parties that were affected do not have cases in
court. All these cases about people having cases in court are not true.”
Punch
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