*As constituents stage rally, express support for recall process
WorldStage Newsonline– The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has notified the suspended Sen. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan about the receipt of a petition to recall her from the National Assembly.
The commission disclosed this in a statement issued by Sam Olumekun, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, on Wednesday in Abuja.
Olumekun also confirmed that further to the statement issued by INEC on Tuesday, the commission had received contact addresses of representatives of the petitioners seeking to recall Natasha.
He stated that the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of the representatives of the petitioners had been provided to INEC in a letter addressed to the chairman of the commission, dated March 26.
“As provided in Clause 2(a) of the commission’s Regulations and Guidelines for Recall 2024, a letter has been written to notify the senator sought to be recalled about the receipt of the petition and delivered to her official address.
“The same letter has been copied to the presiding officer of the senate and published on the commission’s website.
“The next step is to scrutinise the list of signatories submitted by the petitioners to ascertain that the petition is signed by more than one half (over 50 per cent) of the registered voters in the constituency.
“This will be done in the coming days. The outcome, which will be made public, shall determine the next step to be taken by the commission,’’ he said.
Olumekun re-assured Nigerians that the recall process would be open and transparent.
A group of registered voters from Kogi Central Senatorial District had,on Monday, submitted a petition to INEC, urging the commission to commence the recall process of Akpoti-Uduaghan, Senator representing the senatorial district.
The constituents, in the letter signed by the Lead Petitioner, Salihu Habib, and submitted at INEC headquarters, Abuja on Monday, said they no longer had confidence in Akpoti-Uduaghan as their senator and representative in the National Assembly.
Meanwhile, INEC had, on Tuesday, confirmed the receipt of the petition, accompanied by six bags of documents said to be signatures collected from more than half of the 474,554 registered voters from the senatorial district.
Olumekun said in a statement that the figure was said to have spread across 902 polling units in 57 registration areas (wards) in the five local government areas of Adavi, Ajaokuta, Ogori/Magongo, Okehi and Okene.
He assured Nigerians that the commission would follow its legal framework in treating the recall petition.
Olumekum, however, said that the commission’s immediate observation was that the representatives of the petitioners did not provide their contacts in the covering letter of the petition.
These, he said, included their addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses through which they could be contacted, as provided in Clause 1(f) of the commission’s regulations and guidelines.
“The address given was “Okene, Kogi State”, which is not a definite location for contacting the petitioners.
“Only the telephone number of “the lead petitioner” is provided, as against the numbers of all the other representatives of the petitioners,” Olumekun had said.
RALLY
Meanwhile, thousands of constituents from Kogi Central Senatorial District, on Wednesday in Okene, staged a rally to express their support for the ongoing recall process of Sen. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan from the National Assembly.
The constituents, under the aegis of Kogi Central Grassroots Movement, were from the five local government areas making up Kogi Central senatorial district.
The constituents, who spoke through their Coordinator, AbdulHameed Jimoh, and the Secretary, Mohammed Abdullahi, accused the Akpoti-Uduaghan camp of fabricating videos and deliberately distorting information on her recall.
They insisted on going ahead with the senator’s recall process.
“We are appealing to Nigerians to ignore the lies of a few people on social media about our intention and pay visit to Kogi Central to see what is happening with the process.
“She (Sen. Akpoti-Uduaghan) accused the state government of being behind her recall when she knows that even those who were her strong loyalists in the (Kogi) central have abandoned her.
“She went to the National Assembly to pursue her personal interest, not the interest of Kogi Central,” the group said.
The constituents alleged that last weekend, the senator’s camp sent some items to some people in Okene to convince them to come out the next day for a protest.
“They imported people from outside the district to join her very few and reluctant aides and called them Kogi Central constituents,” the group said.
According to the constituents, Akpoti-Uduaghan has put the senatorial district in the eye of the storm for the wrong reason.
They said that no reasonable constituents would fold their arms and see their senatorial district being dragged to the mud without doing something to remedy it.
“The recall process, therefore, is a necessity and deliberate attempt by the people of Kogi Central to tell the whole world that they are not in support of the unruly behaviour of the senator at the assembly.
“She should leave the stage to face her strange activism and quarrels so that we can have quality representation,” the constituents said.
