INEC: Tinubu speaks on his running mate of placeholder

The Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has spoken about his running mate, Kabiru Masari, that submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The APC presidential candidate said Masari was chosen as a running mate and was not a placeholder.

There are speculations that Masari was a placeholder to allow APC to meet INEC’s deadline for the submission of names picked for the role of running mate.

Tinubu said the name of his running mate had been duly submitted to the INEC as required by the law.

He was reacting to remarks by INEC’s Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, that the idea of placeholder was alien to the Nigerian constitution.

Tinubu speaking through his Media Aide, Tunde Rahman,  dismissed claims of Masari being a placeholder.

”Without taking issues with the INEC’s National Commissioner, I just like to state the situation as it relates to the presidential candidate of the APC, Asíwájú Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“And it is that Asíwájú Tinubu has duly completed his nomination forms, including giving the particulars of his running mate. He has returned the completed nomination forms to INEC. He even returned the forms two days ahead of schedule.

“I don’t know about a placeholder. This is the coinage of the media. I know he has picked a running mate,” he told Tribune.

On Monday, INEC Commissioner for Voters’ Education and Information, Barrister Festus Okoye, ruled out the concept of “placeholder” for vice-presidential candidates, saying it has no place in the constitution of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

He said, “placeholder is a unique Nigerian invention” for which the commission’s law has no provision.

According to him, 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 placeholder,” he said

According to him, 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, adding that 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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