The Independent National Electoral Commission and the Founder of the United Peoples Grand Alliance, Chief Chekwas Okorie, are engaged in a face-off over the refusal of the electoral umpire to register the new political association.
INEC said it rejected the application for the registration of UPGA because it flouted relevant sections of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
The rejection letter said the logo of the proposed party had ethnic connotation and its acronym, UPGA, is similar in pronouncement to APGA’s.
The letter, dated April 23, 2012 and signed by the INEC Secretary, Alhaji Abudalahi Kaugama, said: “Please refer to your application for registration as a political party. You may recall that you proposed and accepted the verification of the proposed headquarters of your association on April 17, 2012 as part of the processing of your application.
“Having concluded the legal and other reviews of the documents you submitted the commission has established the following notations.
“This in the opinion of the commission offends section 82(2)(c) of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended.
“Consequently, the commission shall not register UPGA as a political party.”
Okorie fired back in anger.
In a April 25, 2012 letter to INEC, Okorie wrote: “This letter is not only belated; UPGA has become a political party by the effluxion of time. We are further surprised that the commission wrote this letter to us shortly after we complained in writing that Chief Umeh declared in a statewide television programme Face The Press in Anambra State that he had sealed the fate of UPGA at INEC.
“Democracy in Nigeria will be doomed the moment outsiders or virtual interlopers begin to direct and decide for the commission how to carry out its statutory functions and even have the audacity to boast in public in advance of the occurrence of what they boasted about.
“The INEC letter under reference is a rehash of the petition written to INEC by Chief Victor Umeh objecting to the registration of UPGA as a Political Party.”