President Muhammadu Buhari and members of his cabinet seeking the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for next year’s elections are currently weighing five options on whether the ministers should quit before the party’s primaries scheduled for the end of this month.
Public pressure is mounting on the ministers to quit in line with the provisions of Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act 2022 which prohibits public officers from participating in their party primaries either as voters or as candidates.
The affected ministers are Rotimi Amaechi (Transportation), Chris Ngige (Labour and Productivity), Abubakar Malami (Justice) and Emeka Nwajiuba (Minister of State for Education).
All of them, save Malami who wants to govern Kebbi State, are seeking the APC presidential ticket.
The section provides thus: “No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any election.”
But it is currently a subject of litigation at the Federal High Court Abuja where the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is praying the court to restrain the National Assembly from deleting the section from the Act allegedly at the instance of the President.
No comments:
Post a Comment