Barely 24 hours before Nigeria’s general elections, there have been reports circulating on social media that the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) did not include the Labour Party Logo on some ballot papers to be used for elections on February 25.
According to the reports, the ballot papers for the National Assembly elections did not have the Labour Party included.
INEC started the distribution of sensitive election materials in states on Wednesday, February 23, 2023, including Lagos, Benue, Ondo, Ekiti, and Osun.
Several news agencies including The Sun, Business Day, and Nigerian Tribune have reported this claim. According to the newspapers, the Labour Party chairperson in Lagos state, Pastor Dayo Ekong condemned the omission of the party’s logo on the ballot during a news conference in Ikeja, Lagos state.
The chairperson said the ‘malicious error’ was found out by her and her team during a routine inspection of election materials, and called out INEC to either correct the anomaly or reschedule the National Assembly elections.
A press conference by the Labour Party in Ondo state on Friday also claimed the party’s logo was missing from ballot papers.
The legal genesis
In September 2022, INEC omitted Labour Party senatorial and house or representative candidates from the final list of candidates for the general elections. The states particularly omitted were Lagos and Ondo states.
Olukayode Salako, the state chairman of the Labour Party in Ondo state, explained that the party’s candidates were omitted from the list because a former chairman of the party, Ifagbemi Awamaridi, did not submit them to INEC at the appropriate time.
He, however, assured residents that the party’s National Assembly candidates would still make the Independent National Electoral Commission list before voters go to the polls as they were already in court to address the issue.
Consequently, the candidates whose names were omitted across various states had instituted an action against INEC at the Federal High Court in Abuja, complaining against such omission, and praying for the court to mandate the commission to include their names on the senatorial and house of representatives ballot.
The aftermath of this action is that there was a court order mandating INEC to include the names of the candidates on the senatorial and house of representatives ballot.
The court ordered that the electoral body must accept the list of candidates in the 24 states either manually or through its electronic nomination portal.
Did INEC indeed omit Labour Party?
Festus Okoye, INEC commissioner for voter education, told CDD Election War Room that he was not aware of such an omission. INEC spokesperson for Lagos state also said they were not aware of the omission, and promised to share more information after the investigation.
When the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, was asked about the omission, he explained the legal challenges that may have led to a possible omission.
Responding to the question, the chairman made remarks to the effect that the Labour Party had served them 70 processes on the nomination of candidates.
“The commission has a record of obedience to court orders. The party you’re talking about (Labour Party) in one day alone served on INEC 70 processes on the nomination of candidates,” he said.
“And in Lagos on Federal constituencies, we accepted the nomination of 13 out of 24 constituencies from that party by court order. So we’ll look at the court order and respond accordingly,” he said.
It should however be noted that the Labour Party logo was not omitted from the presidential election ballot paper.