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The Nigeria
People’s Congress (NPC) yesterday accused the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) of deliberately shutting out 20 political
parties from submitting list of candidates last Monday.

The party, in a
statement by its chairman, Ngozi Emioma, said the commission refused to
accept duly completed nomination forms of the parties, alleging that
they did not meet the deadline for the submission of the forms.

The party claimed
that the INEC director of political party monitoring had said that only
43 parties beat the deadline for the submission of the list of
candidates last Monday.

“We are appalled
that Professor Attahiru Jega-led INEC would change the electoral goal
post in the middle of a political contest without the consent of the
players. This is an unnecessary distraction and provocation aimed at
discrediting and frustrating the April general election. It is
unacceptable,” Mr. Emioma said.

He urged INEC to
reconsider its position and accept the nomination forms immediately,
saying that the imbroglio would have been averted if the INEC
leadership had communicated its position on the time to submit the
completed nomination forms. He claimed that the timetable released by
the commission clearly stated that the completed forms should be
returned on January 31, 2011.

Mr. Emioma recalled
that in all elections conducted by Mr. Jega’s predecessors, political
parties were at liberty to submit their forms till 12 midnight.

“To complicate
issues, INEC demanded that the forms should be submitted in triplicate.
Again, the commission did not inform political parties of this. NPC
frowns at this indiscriminate policy somersault. This is not an issue
that should heat up the polity. Jega should avoid playing into the
hands of reactionary forces who do not want the success of the April
elections,” he said.

INEC appeal

Meanwhile, a former
national publicity secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change
(CPC), Dennis Aghanya, has appealed to INEC to enforce Section 87 of
the Electoral Act to ensure that political parties submit list of
candidates who won the primary elections.

He argued that a
situation where parties submit names of candidates who did not win the
primaries is a total deviation from how internal democracies within
political parties are designed.

“The implication of these actions is that there would be series of
after election court actions, which will not go well with our
democracy. Boardroom decisions are undemocratic and meant to serve
personal interest of a few political godfathers whose stock in trade
would always be to make money at every election period,” Mr. Aghanya
said.