APC won’t participate in Niger rerun election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Niger state has disclosed that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will not participate in the rerun election for Agwara state constituency.

The election which is scheduled for 25th of this month will have 12 political parties participating.

This was made known Thursday in Minna by the resident electoral Commissioner, Professor Samuel Egwu during a general stakeholders meeting held at INEC office.

The participating political parties include ACD, ADC, AGA, DA, GPN, KP, PPN, PT, SDP, PDP, APGA and ADP while APC would not be participating in the election because the party was challenged in court after the last general elections.

“APC was challenged in court over it candidate, the election petition tribunal ruled against the APC which was appealed and the Appeal court call for rerun of the election.

“And If a party does not scrutinised its candidate well before election, the party forfeit the opportunity to take part in the rerun election which is why the APC would not be participating in the rerun,” Egwu said.

He however added that the commission would not be using any ad hoc staff but only the staff of the commission.
“We are well prepared for the rerun election. The election requires a lot of preparation which is why we call this meeting to rub minds with stakeholders.
“I would like to say here that we are going rely on the internal staff of INEC for the election and no ad hoc staff would be used. We have 36, 411 register voters with 59 polling units, 65 voters points, 279 ad hoc staff purely INEC staff. Collation officers are likely to be from federal institutions and not INEC staff,”.

The REC also added that they are waiting to be communicated by the speaker of the house of representatives on the vacant seat of one of the representatives from Niger state who died recently after which they will start preparation for the rerun.

On security, Egwu said one of the biggest challenge is to evenly spread security men at polling units. Adding that In the deployment we will ensure the spread of security men to all polling units during the election.