Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress, APC has slammed the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC for extending the deadline for political parties to submit the names of their presidential and National Assembly, NASS candidates for the 2027 election.
APC spokesman, Felix Morka accused the election umpire of succumbing to pressure from some certain elements in the country, particularly members of the opposition parties, according to The Tribune newspapers who quoted him.
Recall that the Prof. Joash Amupitan-led INEC has last week extended the deadline to July 14 from July 11, saying its action was based on the intervention of some critical stakeholders, including political parties, the Inter Party Advisory Council, IPAC, among others.
INEC who said the extension was carried out under its powers within the law, said it was necessary for inclusivity.
The extension expires on Tuesday.
Ahead the of the deadline tomorrow, some political parties, including the APC, Nigerian Democratic Coalition, NDC, African Democratic Congress, ADC said they have uploaded their candidates’ on INEC portal.
Reacting, Morka who spoke on Sunday said APC met the deadline, wondering why other political parties in the country could not do so, despite the fact that many of the them have few candidates compared to the ruling party, describing them as incompetent.
“Many of these parties we are talking about don’t even have candidates for all the positions that are available to be contested. Yet, they were incapable and unable to meet INEC deadline of uploading,” Mouka said.
“It just shows the incompetence which they demonstrate and which is why we keep saying, whatever problems that the opposition is dealing with are completely internal to the opposition. We aren’t responsible. Because tomorrow, it won’t shock me if the opposition party will again allege that the APC is the reason they couldn’t upload! The allegation, the idea has always been that the APC has been the one manipulating INEC and all of that. Now, look at what has happened?
“It is the same opposition parties who brought pressures to be on INEC to change the deadline. If APC was so good at manipulating INEC, it would have been in APC interest to have INEC stand its ground to say, “we will not extend,” in order to shortchange the parties from uploading their candidates but we didn’t do that. We simply made the deadline and walked away.
“So, I think Nigerians must begin to see that the problem with these parties is that they are grossly incompetent and unprepared to govern this country and why we are confident that Nigerians won’t offer their votes to these people who clearly don’t have the capacity to lead.”
Before the extension of the deadline, some political parties and opposition figures in the country had accused INEC of trying to shrink the political space, by shutting them out to favour the ruling party ahead the 2027 election.
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