Senator Nenadi Usman-led Labour Party, LP, has urged the newly appointed National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Joash Amupitan (SAN) to prioritise Nigerians in the handling of his new assignment.
Interim National Publicity Secretary of the party, Tony Akeni, in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, said Amupitan has a fate larger than life thrust at his feet.
He said the new INEC boss has a choice to either redeem the largest democracy in Africa or “mutilate and bury its corpse which Professor Yakubu Mahmood had left behind.”
The LP spokesman said the new INEC boss must also choose who he will serve and the legacy he wishes to leave behind for his name and posterity.
Akeni said, “He must choose whether to be honoured by more than 230million Nigerians who employed President Bola Tinubu or to serve the unconstitutional wishes and caprices of a single man, Tinubu, who appointed him.
“To help him make that choice, Professor Amupitan will do well to reflect how more than 230 million Nigerians at home and all over the world will forever remember his immediate predecessor, Mahmood.
“For Labour Party, the first all-important litmus test that the new INEC chairman will pass to prove that he has come to serve Nigeria is to remove the last trace of Julius Abure and his defunct council members from INEC’s portal.
“He should replace them with the Usman-led council, which the statutory NEC of the party has submitted as its executive council in accordance with the Supreme Court’s judgment that the leadership of political parties is strictly the result of the internal decision and processes of parties.
“This also complies with Nigeria and global administrative conventions, which forbid a leadership vacuum in the management of institutions.
“As he steps into the shoes of his predecessor, Amupitan must realise that he is not only on the radar of Nigerians, but the entire world.”
