An Abeokuta Federal High Court has directed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to recognize all National Assembly candidates of the Labour Party (LP) for the 2023 general elections in Ogun State.
We had earlier reported that the names of all candidates of the LP in Ogun were missing when INEC released its final list of candidates.
Following the omission, the party had dragged the commission to court, arguing that the omission was an administrative error on the part of INEC as its conduct of primary elections did not go against the Electoral Act.
The party insisted that it held credible primary elections and also submitted the names of the candidates that emerged from the primaries within 90 days time frame provided by the Electoral Act.
The suit marked FHC/AB/CS/243/2022, between Labour Party, Comrade Abayomi Arabambi and eight others had the INEC as the only respondent.
The party had requested the court for an order compelling INEC to “accept, recognize and publish the names of candidates submitted by the party.”
In his judgment on Thursday, Justice Akintayo Aluko, ordered the electoral umpire to accept and immediately publish the names of the three senatorial, nine House of Representatives and 26 State House of Assembly candidates of the party on its website.
Reacting, counsel to LP, Monday Mawah said, “with this judgment, our Senatorial, House of Representatives and all the 26 State House of Assembly candidates have now been given clearance to contest in the election.
“Today, the court answered the question raised by the Labour Party in the affirmative that we are still within time to conduct primaries and then the court thereafter ordered that INEC should accept the list of candidates from the Federal to the State level to be published immediately to enable those candidates participate like every other candidate and to enable Labour Party to participate like every other party in the forthcoming election.
“The governorship candidate is not part of the case. The candidates that we got judgement for in this case are the three senatorial candidates, the house of representatives and national assembly in the state.
“His (governorship candidate) case is still in the court and he is doing it with his own lawyer, so it is not part of the ones we handled for the party,” he said.