Anambra Central rerun must hold – INEC insists

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Thursday said the Anambra Central Senatorial rerun election must hold as scheduled on January 13.

The Resident Electoral Commissioner in the State, Dr Nkwachkwu Orji who spoke with journalists said the commission had commenced training of adhoc personnel in that respect.

Recall that an Abuja division Federal High Court had ordered the issuance of a certificate of return to one Dr Obiora Okonkwo, insisting that he was the rightful candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which had won the 2015 election for the zone.

But INEC while replying to the judgment said it was still studying the judgment and would react to it in due time.

Speaking with our correspondent on Thursday, the Anambra REC said its legal department had studied the judgements and asked it to go ahead with the election as ordered by the court of appeal as against Tsoho’s Federal High Court judgement.

The REC said, “We are going ahead with the election as scheduled. We have started training adhoc personnel in that respect.”

“Our legal department has asked us to go ahead and obey the Court of Appeal order against the Federal High court judgement. So, we are going ahead to conduct the election on January 13”, the REC stated.
Anambra Central senatorial district had been without a senator since 2015 when a Court of Appeal, Enugu Division, sacked the occupant of the position, Mrs Uche Ekwunife.

The Court asked INEC to conduct rerun in the district within 90 days while disqualifying Ekwunife and her political party, the Peoples Democratic Party from participating in the rerun.

The PDP had to challenge its exclusion in the rerun at the Federal High Court, Abuja which the court granted judgement to it favour.

On appeal, by the candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, Chief Victor Umeh and APGA contended that PDP would not field a candidate in the rerun since it was on its instance that the election was nullified on December 7 ,2015.