The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has cautioned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) against attending or monitoring APC’s Saturday national convention.

PDP said this in a statement on Thursday.

“INEC, being a government agency set up by law, that also draws from the budgetary allocation of the country with respect to superintending over electoral processes and management of political parties, can only superintend over and monitor bodies over which it has the mandate to supervise,” the main opposition party in Nigeria noted.

It further argued that the ruling party had become defunct.

“But the APC, having been defunct on December 8, 2020, when it dissolved its national, states, as well as local government structures, ceases, in the eyes of the law, to be a political party,” PDP explained. “As such, APC cannot be subject of INEC’s regulations with particular reference to its supposed national convention.”

The party also emphasised that the APC Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) was established to organise the ruling party’s national convention in 2020. 

It added that the APC’s CECPC by its composition with a state governor as chairman “is illegal and unconstitutional by reason of Section 183 of the Nigerian Constitution which bars a sitting governor from holding ‘any other executive office in any capacity whatsoever’.”

The statement further pointed out that “Article 14 (i) of the APC Constitution clearly states that the chairman of the APC “shall be the “chief executive…” of the party.

“In going beyond its mandate,” PDP asserted, “the CECPC acted ultra vires, and all administrative acts purportedly done or deemed to have been done by this Committee are null and void and void ab initio.”

According to PDP, delegates to APC’s national convention produced by congresses conducted by the CECPC are “handicapped delegates with leprous fingers which cannot deliver any vote to produce a valid and legal political leadership for the APC.” 

PDP, therefore, warned INEC not to waste public resources to monitor a “jamboree” that would be of no legal or electoral effect under the law.