Respect choice of party candidates, ex-minister tells INEC

A former Minister of Information, Prince Tony Momoh yesterday asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to respect the choice of candidates of political parties, as it prepares for the 2019 general elections.

He said the commission had in 2011 substituted the names of candidates of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) for the various elective positions and replaced them with unknown names that were imposed on the party by alien forces.

Momoh said this yesterday in Abuja at a public lecture in honour of the late director general of The Electoral Institute (TEI), Professor Abubakar Mommoh with the theme: Towards 2019 General Elections: Political Parties And Internal Democracy.

He noted that by virtue of democratic provisions, INEC had no right under any influence to replace candidates of political parties without their consent.He insisted that the defunct CPC would have had a better outing if not for what he described as the unfortunate role the commission played then.

TEI, which is the training and research arm of INEC, was established in 2005 with the primary responsibility to conduct training and research covering all aspects of the country’s electoral process.

Its public lecture series have also provided a veritable platform for academics, election administrators, the media, civil society organisations, political parties and other stakeholders to examine current issues in the nation’s electoral process and brainstorm on how best to address them.