Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, (SAN), has threatened to sue the Nigerian government if the 10th Senate confirms partisan persons nominated by President Bola Tinubu as Resident Electoral Commissioners of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Mr Falana disclosed this in a short statement on Sunday.
Mr Falana said the combined effect of section 154(1) of the Nigerian 1999 constitution and Paragraph 14 of the Third Schedule to the constitution has prohibited the appointment of partisan persons and persons with questionable integrity as members of the Electoral Commission, INEC.
According to him, the nomination of some persons on the list are “constitutionally disabled”.
“In order to guarantee the credibility of elections, persons who are loyal to any of the registered political parties shall not be appointed as INEC Commissioners and Resident Electoral Commissioners,” he said.
“Specifically 4 of them are members and close allies of the All Progressive Congress (APC) while another member has just relinquished the post of a Special Adviser to a former Governor elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party.”
Mr Falana, who said the conduct of the 2027 general elections must be transparent, noted that Nigeria cannot afford an electoral commission constituted by “card-carrying members and loyalists of the ruling party and its collaborators”.
“To that extent, the appointment of the 4 nominees will be challenged at the Federal High Court if the Senate decides to confirm them in defiance of extant constitutional provisions,” he said.
Meanwhile,a few days before Tinubu announced these nominations, a former INEC chairperson Attahiru Jega, a professor, criticised the existing laws that empower politicians to appoint top officials of the commission.
Mr Jega, who headed the electoral commission from 2010 to 2015, said such nominees are usually not thoroughly screened, a situation he said has a ‘damaging effect’ on the integrity of elections.
He, therefore, recommended that the power to hire and fire officials should be taken from the president and placed with the commission so as to make it independent of politicians.
“The appointment of Resident Electoral Commissioners should be divested from the president and given to the Commission at INEC, with powers to hire and fire,” he said at a retreat for members of the Senate in Akwa Ibom State.
