•Leaders fly to Abuja, seek backdating option with INEC
•party’s candidates will be ineligible in the coming elections
Leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Kwara State are in panic mode as report has emerged they flew to Abuja in an almost fruitless effort of salvaging their party’s primary whose fate hangs in the balance.
Revelations show that the Kwara SDP failed to submit its party register as mandated by the Electoral Act 2022 thirty days before its primary.
Our medium also learnt that the national headquarters of the party saddled with the responsibility of submitting membership register to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has not done that up till date.
Leaders of the party in Kwara State are now seeking the option of backdating their own submission date with the INEC, according to a source familiar with the development.
“They are now in Abuja, pressing all buttons and mounting pressures on INEC to backdate for them as a means to come out of this quagmire,” the source said.
Kwara SDP held its primary in May 2022, but did not submit its register until October 2022, five months after per a document sighted by our medium, a clear violation of the provision of the law.
The party first held a primary that turned out to be controversial and rancorous on May 25, before conducting another one in May 30, again leaving the party divided and broken.
Section 77 of the Law says each party is required to maintain a membership register in hard and soft copy and to make such register available to the Commission not later than 30 days before the date fixed for primaries, congresses and conventions.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, also harped on this detail at the second regular quarterly meeting of Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in Abuja.
“Doing otherwise is like going into an election without the register of voters. There can be no credible primary or general election without a credible register of voters,” Mr Yakubu said.
Pundits have said the development is an additional problem to Kwara SDP which suffers popularity crisis.
All the candidates that emerged from their primary in the state risk to be declared ineligible in the forthcoming election.
According to a commentator that spoke to our medium on condition of anonymity, the non-submission of the party register further strengthens the claim in some quarters that Kwara SDP is a conglomerate of inexperienced people who lack the intellectual know-how to manage a party not to talk of government.
