Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has disclosed that, the commission had been dragged to court more than 1,600 times in relation to the 2019 general elections.
The INEC boss said most of the cases stemmed from acrimonious political party primaries.
He stated this in Kaduna on Saturday shortly after receiving an award for excellence from the Kaduna State chapter of the National Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).
Professor Yakubu who was fielding questions from newsmen on the possibility of credible, rancour and litigation-free elections in Nigeria said, acrimonies from political party primaries was responsible for most of the crises and court cases.
According to him, “we can have election that is free, but elections start from party primaries, because they produce the candidates for the general election. However, before the last general elections, we had some of the most acrimonous party primaries in the history of elections in Nigeria, resulting to a large number of litigations.
“As we speak, INEC has been dragged to court 809 times over the conduct of primaries by political parties. If you add that to the post-election litigations, we have so far been dragged to court over 1,600 times. So, we have been dragged to court over party primaries, the suits challenging the conduct of the election.
“That not withstanding, elections can be free and fair; we are doing our best as an electoral commission, but INEC has its responsibilities clearly cut out, others have theirs, especially the political parties have theirs. But, working together, we will actually get to where we desire to be,” he said.