No Plan To Postpone Ondo Election – INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has no plan to postpone the conduct of the Ondo governorship election scheduled for Saturday, 26th November 2016.

The election umpire stated this in its daily bulletin of Wednesday, 23 November, 2016.

Addressing a Stakeholders Forum at Akure, the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said the Commission was fully prepared to conduct the election, stressing that there was no ground in law to postpone the election.

Professor Yakubu told stakeholders in apparent reaction to those calling for a postponement of the election, that the Commission under his watch would continue to operate strictly within the confines of the law.

The INEC Chairman emphasized that the Commission took the conduct of the Ondo governorship election seriously. And to underscore this seriousness, he explained, the Commission was deploying three National Commissioners to supervise the election in each of the three Senatorial Zones and six Residential Electoral Commissioners (RECs) to assist the REC in charge of Ondo State.

Of the one hundred and forty elections conducted since the inauguration of the Commission under his watch, Professor Yakubu noted that not a single one was nullified, including the controversial Kogi governorship election, which was later upheld by the Supreme Court.

He vowed that INEC, under his leadership, would never compromise or comport itself outside the Constitution, the Electoral Act and INEC Guidelines and Regulations. Asserted he: “This INEC will never compromise. We shall never waver. We shall never shirk.”