July 09, (THEWILL) – The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) insists that Ms. Lauretta Onochie must be disqualified as a National Commissioner in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for which she has been nominated by President Muhammadu Buhari.
PDP’s oft-stated position appeared reinforced after the Thursday appearance of the Presidential Media Assistant and five other nominees before the Senate Screening Committee for the position, with the party charging her with speaking falsehood before the legislators.
According to the country’s leading opposition party, Onochie’s denial of her past role as an active member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) made her unfit for the office.
Since Buhari sent the names to the Senate for confirmation in October 2020 via a letter the President transmitted, PDP singled out Onochie for disqualification, insisting that her impartiality and integrity as a member of the nation’s electoral umpire could not be guaranteed.
PDP’s Thursday statement, made after Onochie’s Senate screening, bore the signature of its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, and said: “Nigerians were amused to watch Lauretta Onochie, a nationally known APC front runner, as she spewed falsehood before the Senator Kabiru Gaya-led Senate Committee on INEC in denial of her membership of the APC.
“With her lies, Lauretta Onochie, a die-in-the-wool APC member, whose name appears as Number 2 on the Ward 4 register of the APC in Aniocha Local Government Area of Delta State, has further demonstrated her lack of integrity to be trusted with the position of a national commissioner in INEC.
“Lauretta Onochie in her escapade in the Senate may have forgotten that the lawmakers and Nigerians, in general, are aware of her subsisting oath filed in a pending suit in court affirming her membership of the APC, which she further reinforced and adopted under cross-examination in the same matter very recently.
“With such proclivity to desperate denials in the face of the truth, allowing Lauretta Onochie anywhere near INEC would pollute the commission as well as the conduct of elections by the commission.
“Now that the facts of Onochie’s partisanship have been further laid bare before the Senate, the PDP urges the Senator Gaya Committee on INEC to stand on the side of the Constitution and the sanctity of our electoral process by outrightly rejecting the nomination of Lauretta Onochie as INEC Commissioner.”
Buhari had nominated Lauretta Onochie alongside Professor Muhammad Sani Kallah (Katsina), Professor Kunle Cornelius Ajayi (Ekiti), Saidu Babura Ahmad (Jigawa), Professor Sani Muhammad Adam (North-Central) and Dr. Baba Bila (North East).
Onochie arrived at the Senate section of the National Assembly on Thursday morning in company of the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters, Babajide Omoworare.
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