Election Tribunal: It Is The Job Of Political Parties To Verify Candidates’ Documents, Not INEC, Says Liborous Oshoma

Human rights activist and lawyer, Liborous Oshoma, has said it is not the job of the independent national electoral commission, to verify documents and certificates presented by the different candidates vying for positions.

Oshoma said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, while reviewing the progress of the state election petition tribunal.

He said the responsibility lies on the political parties to do a thorough verification before handing it over to INEC.

“It is not an INEC problem. It is purely a political party problem and a Nigerian problem. There is no place in the law where it says that INEC has to individually verify certificates that were tendered or submitted by candidates.

“INEC put out a form and that is why they request you to go make a deposition before the commissioner of oath that the information you are giving is true and that you are not lying on oath. 

“If you are saddling them with the responsibility of individually going to verify, that’s a huge fund. It is not for INEC to go on the voyage of correct documents.

“What the political party needs to do – because they are the beneficiaries of any election and also, they are the ones that will suffer if at the end of the day, it is discovered that documents submitted are either fake or forged – is for them to do a detailed and thorough verification of every document submitted, before they are handed over to the INEC.

“In the absence of that, you can just win an election and it will become short-lived because at the point of receiving the crown or after receiving the crown, the court nullifies it.”

Oshoma also noted that there are three similar patterns which he noticed to have arisen in all the ongoing election tribunals.

 “Three patterns I see are one, on disqualification on membership of political parties. Second, disqualification on the grounds of invalidly conducted primaries, lack of proper notice not issued and the last one is that age long supreme court decision on the ground of forged documents.”

Chioma Kalu

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