A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Oba Maduabuchi, has said that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has no constitutional power to disqualify candidates.
He said this following the release of the final list of candidates by the electoral umpire on Friday, with several candidates contesting various positions in the 2027 general elections missing from the list.
According to him, to understand the powers of a body like INEC, one must refer to the Electoral Act and the Constitution, where the powers of the electoral body are clearly outlined.
He maintained that none of the documents empowers INEC to disqualify a candidate or gives it the right to determine who can contest an election, adding that the commission was ill-advised.
He told Arise TV: “The police, Army and INEC are statutory creations. They are created by law. That law defines the ambit of the powers exercisable by those bodies. So, to know what a particular body has the capacity to do, you go back to its establishing statute. For INEC, these are the Electoral Act and the Nigerian Constitution.
“These are the two documents you must look at. There is no provision in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution authorising INEC to disqualify anybody. There is none.
“There is also no provision in the Electoral Act that gives INEC the power to decide whether somebody is qualified to contest an election. There is no such provision.
“So, INEC is simply…how do I describe it? I have to be careful with the words I use. But I think they are ill-advised, to say the least.”
2027: INEC has no power to disqualify candidates – Oba Maduabuchi