Reports have emerged indicating that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was being untruthful about its claims that it was unaware of a meeting between it and the merging opposition parties of the All Progressives Congress (APC) last Friday.
Contrary to the claims of the electoral body, a letter written by the secretary of INEC, Abdullahi Kaugama, indicates that the commission requested the meeting.
A meeting between the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN; Congress for Progressive Change, CPC; All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP; and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, and the Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega was supposed to have held about two weeks ago. It was then rescheduled for Friday at the headquarters of INEC about 10am, but it did not hold.
When asked why the meeting did not hold, the director of public affairs in INEC, Dr. Emmanuel Umenger, on Friday denied knowledge of such a meeting.
Umenger had said that “any time there is a meeting like this I am usually communicated. I was not officially communicated of such a meeting.”
When contacted, the chief press secretary to the INEC chairman, Mr. Kayode Idowu, maintained that he was not going to comment on the APC saga.
But a letter obtained by this paper reveals that last Friday’s meeting was actually at the instance of INEC, and that a letter was written by the secretary to the commission, Abdullahi A Kaugama, to the opposition parties, notifying them of the availability of the national chairman for the meeting.
The letter, written by Kaugama and dated March 18, 2013, was entitled “RE: REQUEST FOR MEETING WITH HON. CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION.”
The letter reads:
“Please refer to your request for a meeting with Hon. Chairman and Members of the Commission (Ref: ACN/ADM/INEC/05/494) and our reply (Ref: INEC/DPPMand L/ACN/03/Vol.IV/294) which advised that the requested date of 14th March, 2013 was not convenient.
“This is to inform you that Hon. Chairman and Members of the Commission would be available to meet with your delegation on Friday March 22, 2013 at 10:00am.
“Kindly confirm your acceptance of this date please.”
The spokespersons of the CPC and the CAN, Rotimi Fashakin and Lai Mohammed had told this correspondent that the meeting would hold on Friday, after the parties’ request to INEC for a meeting could not hold.
When asked why the meeting did not hold, Fashakin had on Friday said that it had been overtaken by events even though he maintained that the INEC re-invited them for the Friday meeting.
He had said: “Events overtook the meeting. This meeting was scheduled two weeks ago. We sent a letter then but it could not hold. They now sent a note that they are ready to see us now,”
But Lai Mohammed had said the ACN would not be able to attend the meeting because the notice given to it was too short, stressing that the party would need time to assemble its party leaders who did not all reside in Abuja.
However, a source who pleaded anonymity disclosed that last Friday’s meeting which did not hold was at the instance of the INEC, adding that the parties asked for the postponement of the meeting by two to three days because the chairmen of the merging parties could not be assembled on such short notice.
It was gathered that the meeting was an attempt to sort out the confusion arising from the tussle over the APC acronym involving at least two other political associations, African People’s Congress and All Patriotic Citizens.
APC chieftains have described the acronym as their intellectual property, just as they questioned the role of INEC in the confusion.