Threat To Sue PDP: You’ve no character left to be defamed, group tells INEC Chair

The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) has noted with dismay that in spite of widespread public outcries over perceived brazen compromise of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly polls that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof Mahmud Yakubu seems to be carrying on as if nothing happened.

The group said it is peeved that Prof Mahmud Yakubu still parades himself as a “professor of integrity and character”; to the extent of threatening to sue the PDP and its presidential candidate with a defamation of character lawsuit just for calling on INEC Chairman to resign on the ground of lack of character and integrity. In a press statement signed by Emeka Umeagbalasi, Board Chairman, Intersociety and three other officials, the group said: “Intersociety makes bold to say that there is no more professorial and personal integrity and character left of the INEC Chairman, to be defamed.

“It is also obvious that resorting to ‘threat of character defamation lawsuit’ is a ploy to intimidate and muscle the fundamental human rights (rights to freedom from discrimination and freedom of conscience and expression) of tens of millions of aggrieved voices including victims of the INEC Chairman’s supervised electoral compromise of 2023. “By convention and law, the INEC Chairman is vicariously or directly liable for his conducts or misconducts, actions or inactions or commissions or omissions in the performance of his official duties. This is more so when Section 2 (3) of INEC Establishment Act of 2004 unambiguously stated that ‘the Chairman and members of the Commission shall be persons of unquestionable integrity’.” The group regretted that the Commission’s resort to ‘technicalities’ and other escapist conducts are totally condemnable and must be unmasked. Intersociety maintained that the Commission’s recent decision to approach the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal for an order to “reconfigure BVAS” was externally plotted and done in bad faith.