Why
I shunned INEC’s parley — Alaafin
By YINKA FABOWALE, Ibadan
Monday,
March 26, 2007
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•Oba Lamidi Adeyemi
Photo:
Sun News Publishing
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The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, has explained that
the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commmission
(INEC) not to listen to any advice on the disqualification
of some candidates in the coming election informed his staying
away from INEC’s interactive session last Thursday in
Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Oba Adeyemi told reporters who accosted him while refuelling
his cars at a filling station in Apata, Ibadan on Thursday
that he was ready for the meeting but had a change of mind
after reading INEC’s position in the newspapers that
nothing would make the commission change its position on the
disqualified candidates. “I felt the meeting was no
more necessary,” the monarch said.
INEC had fixed a meeting with traditional rulers in the South
West geo-political zone for Abeokuta last Thursday on its
sensitisation campaign on the coming elections at which the
royal father was conspicously absent. Pressed further to speak
on the disqualification of Vice President Atiku Abubakar,
Oba Adeyemi faulted the basis of his disqualification, arguing
that if it was because an administrative panel had indicted
him, the court of law still has to confirm whether the man
was guilty or not before he could be excluded from the election.
His words: “My understanding of the word indictment
is that it is a written statement accusing somebody of a crime
and not a judgment in itself,” adding that in such a
case, the person so indicted still deserved the benefit of
doubt.
He maintained that it was wrong for the electoral body to
constitute itself into the electorate to decide who to contest
and who would not, stressing that INEC needed to give Nigerians
the level playing field to choose whosoever they wanted to
lead them. Oba Adeyemi said the paper he was to deliver at
the meeting was to submit that INEC should rescind its decision
on disqualification of candidates, but regretted that it would
be belated to do so since the commission had made up its mind.
He said if he had gone to attend the meeting and at the end
of the day INEC still stuck to its gun on the disqualification
of candidates, his participation would have been an exercise
in futility.
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