Posted by By YINKA FABOWALE, Ibadan on
The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, has explained that the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commmission (INEC) not to listen to any advice on the disqualification of some candidates in the coming election informed his staying away from INEC's interactive session last Thursday in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, has explained that the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commmission (INEC) not to listen to any advice on the disqualification of some candidates in the coming election informed his staying away from INEC's interactive session last Thursday in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Oba Adeyemi told reporters who accosted him while refuelling his cars at a filling station in Apata, Ibadan on Thursday that he was ready for the meeting but had a change of mind after reading INEC's position in the newspapers that nothing would make the commission change its position on the disqualified candidates. 'I felt the meeting was no more necessary," the monarch said.
INEC had fixed a meeting with traditional rulers in the South West geo-political zone for Abeokuta last Thursday on its sensitisation campaign on the coming elections at which the royal father was conspicously absent. Pressed further to speak on the disqualification of Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Oba Adeyemi faulted the basis of his disqualification, arguing that if it was because an administrative panel had indicted him, the court of law still has to confirm whether the man was guilty or not before he could be excluded from the election.
His words: 'My understanding of the word indictment is that it is a written statement accusing somebody of a crime and not a judgment in itself," adding that in such a case, the person so indicted still deserved the benefit of doubt.
He maintained that it was wrong for the electoral body to constitute itself into the electorate to decide who to contest and who would not, stressing that INEC needed to give Nigerians the level playing field to choose whosoever they wanted to lead them. Oba Adeyemi said the paper he was to deliver at the meeting was to submit that INEC should rescind its decision on disqualification of candidates, but regretted that it would be belated to do so since the commission had made up its mind.
He said if he had gone to attend the meeting and at the end of the day INEC still stuck to its gun on the disqualification of candidates, his participation would have been an exercise in futility.