Delta LG polls: Four political parties disqualified

Delta State Independent Electoral Commission (DSIEC) has disqualified four, out of the 15 registered political parties bidding to contest the forth coming council polls in the state.

While Accord Party, APC, APGA, KOWA, LP, PDM, PDP, SDP, UDP, UPN and UPP made it, ACD, ADC, NCP and ACPN were disqualified for failing to submit forms 001 and 002.

15 members of the state Association of Registered Political Parties (ARPP) had picked forms for the race into the 25 local government areas of the state before the sledge hammer.

The chairman of the commission, Mr. Moses Ogbe at a training workshop organized for the commission’s management team (train-the-trainers) by the International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) on election processes in Asaba said the four political parties were unable to beat the deadline for collection and submission of the forms.

The chairman noted that at the expiration of the date, some political parties that came for business as usual were turned down.

He said, “For us, we have refused four political parties who came after the expiration of the date to come and submit lists of candidates and as I am talking, for Deltans to know 11 political parties have submitted their lists of candidates for the next election and we are going to conduct election for only 11 political parties”, Ogbe said.

Ogbe foreclosed the chance of adding to the list or reduce it, maintaining that “except if any of the political parties chose to withdraw from the race”, adding that “for now, we will make sure that we produce materials for only 11 political parties.”

He hinted that commission directed all electoral officers to paste the form 001 in all the local governments, “the four officers who have not pasted theirs have been recalled, new staff are been posted to those local governments because we want a situation where at the end of the exercise, other states will come and copy from us.

“We want to conduct election in such a way that both winners and losers will be happy that they participated in the exercise. In fact, losers, if they are truthful to themselves will congratulate the winners and they will embrace themselves, this is exactly what DSIEC want to do. And so, I want to sound it as a form of warning to all our staff that we most perform our duties in the right form, those who are not prepared, who think it is business as usual should know that this is a different dispensation,” he said.