The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has dismissed the concept of “placeholder” for vice-presidential candidates as illegal, saying it “has no place in Nigeria’s constitutional and legal framework.”
To beat the June 17 deadline for submission of presidential and vice-presidential candidates, some parties submitted names of vice-presidential candidates who they described as placeholders.
The ruling All progressives Congress, APC, Labour Party, LP, and the New Nigeria People Party, NNPP are caught in the web of placeholder running mates.
Tinubu submitted Ibrahim Kabiru Masari, a politician from Katsina State, while Obi nominated Doyin Okupe, a former aide of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Kwankwaso nominated Ladipo Johnson as running mate.
All the VP nominees were named as placeholders.
But in a comment on the development, INEC Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye said the concept of the placeholder is strange to the electoral law.
In an interview on Monday, Okoye said the “placeholder is a unique Nigerian invention” for which the commission’s law has no provision.
“The constitution makes it very clear that you cannot run alone as a presidential candidate and must nominate an associate to run with you for that position, and as far as INEC is concerned, the presidential candidates have submitted their associates to run with them in the presidential election.
“As far as we are concerned, there’s no form submitted by the presidential candidate where they said ‘we’re submitting this person’s name as a place or space holder.
“The issue of space or placeholder is a unique Nigerian invention that has no place in our constitutional and legal framework.
“Political parties’ candidates have submitted names of associates to run with them, and that is the position of the law as of today and nothing has changed. For there to be a substitution of a candidate, the vice-presidential candidate must write to INEC, with a sworn affidavit stating that he is withdrawing from the race within the time frame provided by the law.
“That’s the only way there can be a substitution of candidates.”
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