Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is in a dilemma over how to handle the judgment of a Federal High Court in Abuja. The Commission yesterday summoned the consortium of its lawyers to brainstorm on what its appropriate response should be.

It was also scooped that INEC would conduct governorship elections in Delta State contrary to the view in certain quarters that Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan would benefit from the judgment having won a rerun, though he was not a party in the suit.

INEC’s Director of Public Affairs, Emmanuel Umenger told Daily Sun that the Commission would not react to the development because it was yet to be served with the judgment. But it was learnt that the Commission would not appeal the judgment.
He insisted that the Commission would only make its position known when it received a copy of the judgment.

Sources close to the Chairman’s office said though Professor Jega was shocked when he heard of the judgment, he nevertheless felt relieved that five states were out of his way. The Commission, it was gathered, was initially torn between whether to appeal the judgment or to allow it to stay.
However, the consortium of INEC lawyers leaned towards allowing the judgment to remain, reasoning that if the Commission should challenge the judgment, “it would lose its claim of impartiality since it was not an active interested party to the suit.”

On Uduaghan, the INEC lawyers were yet to ascertain the true position of the law on his own case, but an enquiry by Daily Sun from some seasoned lawyers indicated that the governor could not share in the judgment. A former Chief Justice of a state in the South-South who was also a former Chief Justice of an East African country, who pleaded anonymity told Daily Sun that Uduaghan could not have been a beneficiary of the judgment having been sworn in same day the amended constitution was signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan.

While President Jonathan was signing the new constitution in Abuja in the morning of January 10, Uduaghan was being sworn in in Asaba, Delta State.