20 parties urge INEC to shift Ondo guber poll

With five days to November 26 date scheduled for the conduct of the Ondo State governorship election, 20 political parties Monday, November 21 called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) , to postpone the election, citing security concerns.
The call came barely 48 hours after a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi, nade similar request to INEC on Saturday.
But the All Progressives Congress and another faction of PDP led by Senator Ali Modu Sheriff kicked against the request then.
The twenty parties made the call at the end of their emergency meeting in Abuja.
The leaders of the parties who met at the national secretariat of Labour Party (LP) expressed security concerns and thus resolved to call on INEC to shift the governorship election.
The National Chairman of Labour Party, Alhaji Abdulkadir Abdulsalam, read out the parties’ position at a joint press conference attended by all the chairmen and key national officers of the 20 political parties.
The text of their position paper reads in part, “Just a few months ago, in the Edo governorship election, INEC upheld the candidacy of the Senator Markafi-led faction of the PDP as the authentic group to file a candidate for the party.  “Now, in the Ondo State governorship election slated for Saturday, 26 November, 2016, the same electoral umpire is upholding the governorship candidacy of the Senator Sheriff-led faction of the party, under the guise of “obeying Court Order”.
“This quagmire must be resolved by the courts, even if this drags on to the Supreme Court, before any meaningful governorship election can take place in Ondo State.
“If INEC is brazenly intimidated into abdicating its rudimentary function of monitoring and certifying  the validity of party primary elections for the selection of candidates, and instead acquiesce  by allowing the court to arbitrarily pick candidates without INEC-monitored primaries, then our democracy is becoming gravely injured, needing urgent ambulatory care and political surgery.