Against its earlier stance, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has extended the deadline for the conduct of primaries by political parties.
The commission made the adjustments on Friday after a meeting with Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), an umbrella body for the 18 registered political parties in Nigeria.
The deadline has been postponed till June 9, an extension by six days from June 3 it earlier fixed for the activities.
Before the latest development, the IPAC had requested for an extension of the deadline by at least 37 days more, a move the INEC on at least three different fora opposed.
“I hereby reiterate the position of the Commission that there will be no review of the timelines. There are so many inter-related activities that are associated with the timelines which must be carried out.
“Any review to extend the timeline for one activity will affect other activities and put unnecessary pressure on political parties and the Commission. This will ultimately result in more complications than what the extension seeks to achieve. Therefore, the Commission will not review the timelines,” the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, reiterated two weeks ago.
However, bowing to pressure from the party, Mr Yakubu, in a statement released on Friday night, said an extension of the date would not hurt its schedule of activities.
As explained by the chairman, the newly approved six-day extension will afford the parties to conclude outstanding primaries and prepare the list of candidates and upload their affidavits on the commission’s portal.
Due to this recent development the ruling party has postponed its special convention for presidential primary from Sunday to Monday (May 29 -30) and fix it between Monday, June 6 and Wednesday, June 8, 2022.
Felix Morka, APC National Publicity Secretary in statement on Saturday morning said the postponement followed Independent National Electoral Commission’s extension of deadline for party primaries from June 3 to 9.
