INEC vows to go ahead with Melaye’s recall despite lawsuit

.Signatories for my recall forged – Senator
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has insisted that it will go ahead with the process of recalling the senator representing Kogi West in the Senate, Dino Melaye.

This is coming few days after the embattled senator approached the Federal High Court in Abuja seeking an injunction to halt his recall from the Senate.

Melaye through his lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, had filed a 33-page legal argument seeking to obtain an injunction against INEC.

The application was accompanied by an affidavit of urgency filed by a staff of Ozekhome’s law firm.

However, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which received the signatories for the recall on Wednesday, said it would press on with the exercise.

A top-level source in the Legal unit of INEC said the electoral umpire has at least three precedents to follow in dealing with the case.

“INEC would go ahead to conduct the referendum in so far as INEC is able to verify or ascertain the genuineness of the signatures. Every lawmaker that had faced the issue of recall in the past, from Plateau, Jigawa to Abia, ran to the courts but such actions never stopped the Commission from going ahead with the referendum”, he said.

Meanwhile, INEC’s Director in-charge of Voter Education, Publicity, Civil Society and Gender Liaison, Oluwole Osaze-Uzi, said the electoral body was not yet aware of any lawsuit filed by Melaye, adding that INEC would not want to react to issues it read in the media.

“We have not been served. We shall enter an appearance and defend what we have to defend (when served with the notice). But for now, we cannot start reacting to comments or statements we read in the media”, he said.

It would be recalled that the embattled senator had, on Friday, reportedly dragged INEC before the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, seeking an order to halt the process by his constituents to recall him.

The embattled Senator has however alleged that the acclaimed figures of signatories collected for his recall were forged and fraudulent.

Addressing newsmen in Lokoja at the weekend at the press centre of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Melaye, who is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory, noted that his investigation revealed that even the dead signed the recall across the seven local government councils of the senatorial district.

Melaye, who spoke through one of his legislative aide, Mallam Abubakar Sadiq, stressed that the name of the former governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, late Chief Yakubu Rotimi Obadofin, from Ijumu local government council precisely Iya-Gbede axis, was included in the list.

“Let me also sound authoritatively that here in Lokoja local government council several others whose names and signatures appeared on the list of the signatories to this failed exercise were identified and known to us as been dead long before now, such people like late Abdullahi Abubakar, his immediate younger sister, late Halima LawiI Abubakar and Ibrahim Adama of Unit Code 021 Adankolo ring road in Ward ‘A’ Lokoja local government council.

“Also one late Salihu Black of Gegu-Beki town in Kogi local government council who until his death was a biology teacher in Government Secondary School, Koton-Karfi, also appended his signatories on the recall list.

“This recall exercise was hatched in Government House due to the manner in which Senator Dino Melaye had consistently challenged and engaged the government of Kogi State over non-payment of workers’ salaries and pensioners for over 15 months so also the closure of tertiary institutions,” he stated.

Senator Melaye added that they claimed to have gotten over 188,000 signatories of electorate in Kogi West whereas the total vote cast in the last senatorial election of 2015 was merely 111,000 for all the candidates that participated at the election both valid and rejected votes.

“For God sake, how could they have gotten such figures, where people were not seen in most of the polling unit visited during the said purported exercise?

“Should INEC proceeds on verification process, they cannot get up to 5 percent of the total figure forged because those names and signatories were collated by proxy in various homes and the government house,” he alleged.

In a swift reaction, the governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello while reacting to the allegation said Senator Dino Melaye should stop worried about INEC.

The governor who spoke his Chief Press Secretary, Mrs. Petra Onyegbule Akinti, said: “The fact about the people that registered is with INEC. INEC has the responsibility of verifying the signatures, so it has nothing to do with the Kogi State Government.

“There is nothing for the distinguished senator to be worried about. INEC has set July 3rd for the public verification of signatures and the date is around the corner, there is no point burning their energies all over the place.

“We should all allow INEC to do the needful so there is nothing to get my reaction for it should be the INEC people.”