INEC Registration: Umar Ardo lied – NDC

NDC Secretary

By TONY NEBOLISA

The Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC) has put a lie to the claim by Dr. Umar Ardo of ADA that the NDC’s registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, did not follow due process.

The party, in a statement signed by its National Secretary, Barr. Ikenna Morgan Enekweizu, said such a claim is not only mischievous and misleading, but a wicked lie from the pit of hell.

“This is not the first time Dr. Ardo would be peddling this same falsehood. We recall that barely 48 hours after INEC announced the registration of both NDC and DLA, Ardo was on an ARISE NEWS programme dishing out the same falsehood about NDC and making insinuations on why it was registered.

“Rather than concern himself with his ADA which failed to scale the INEC hurdle, Ardo had spent a large chunk of his allotted airtime attacking NDC, saying he did not comprehend how the party came to be registered.

Curiously, more than a month after that ARISE NEWS interview, Ardo has still not made good his promise to approach the Lokoja court that gave the ruling, on the strength of which the NDC was registered by INEC. Rather, he has gone again on Trust TV to repeat the same lies”.

‘Our position’ the NDC statement said, “is that Dr. Ardo knows the truth but has chosen to follow the ignoble path of shunning the truth for some selfish or sinister reasons.”

That truth, according to the NDC National Secretary, is that “the processes for the registration of the NDC predates the 2025 date Ardo is bandying about”.

“NDC first applied for registration as far back as 2017. And was among the initial 171 associations that sought registration.

“It only approached the court when it felt dissatisfied with the reasons INEC, under Prof. Yakubu, advanced for dropping the party from the process and almost aborting its registration.