The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Wednesday said it had no intention to shift the date for the September 19 governorship election in Edo State, noting that a postponement will lead to a constitutional crisis.
The commission also said that out of 14 items in the preparation for the governorship election, nine of them had been implemented.
The commission also justified why it deregistered some political parties, explaining that they had no verifiable addresses, with some of them traced to business centres.
Speaking at the Channels Television Sunrise Daily Programme, the INEC National Commissioner for Information and Chairman of Voter Education, Festus Okoye assured that the September 19 governorship election will go ahead as planned as the political parties have complied with INEC’s notice over threats of violence.
According to Okoye, “INEC is progressively moving ahead with the September 19 Edo state governorship election. There are fourteen items for the election and nine of them have been implemented and non-sensitive materials have been deployed. We are proceeding with the election as planned.
“The political parties on their own are complying with the commission’s warning on violence and we have also observed a change from the threats of violence. So, we are moving ahead with the election”, Okoye stated.
According to the INEC National Commissioner, there would be a constitutional crisis, if the election is not conducted because section 178 (2) stated the timeline for the election to be conducted.
He explained that the Edo state governorship election must be conducted before October 13, or else, there would be a constitutional crisis.
He also said that the political parties were “pulling out of their threats of violence and INEC is therefore going ahead with the governorship election as planned”
Okoye who explained why some of the registered political parties were deregistered, said that in November 2019, that the commission wrote the political parties, but discovered that they had no verifiable addresses.
He said, “When INEC put a telephone call to their registered telephone numbers, we discovered that the telephone lines were ringing as telephone lines of some business centres and some of them have no verifiable office addresses.”
