The Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has tackled the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for defending the presidential election victory of the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Obi accused INEC of bias, describing as embarrasing the insistence of the electoral umpire that Tinubu won the election and that the petitions challenging the declaration should be dismissed.
Obi said it was bizzare that INEC, which ought to be neutral, filed a preliminary objection to the petitions challenging Tinubu’s victory.
“The first respondent, forgetting its role as an electoral umpire, gave a Notice of Preliminary Objection to challenge the alleged incompetence of the petition.
“The global best practice for electoral umpires in national elections is that an electoral body must avoid creating the impression that it has no respect for neutrality in an electoral contest between candidates.
“The appellate courts have repeatedly admonished the first respondent of its need to remain neutral in election proceedings. However, the first respondent, hereof, has remained impervious to change.
“Therefore, it is not only an embarrassment but a repudiation of the duty of the first respondent when it adorns the garb of a contestant in an election it conducted as an umpire to raise preliminary objection against an election petition as in the case hereof.”
