{"id":2992,"date":"2025-03-25T15:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T15:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/?p=2992"},"modified":"2025-03-25T15:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T15:36:07","slug":"sen-natashas-recall-suffers-setback-as-inec-faults-petitioners-signatures-says-petition-lacks-constitutional-requirements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/2025\/03\/25\/sen-natashas-recall-suffers-setback-as-inec-faults-petitioners-signatures-says-petition-lacks-constitutional-requirements\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Natasha&#8217;s Recall suffers setback\u00a0  &#8230;As INEC faults petitioners signatures  &#8230;&#8230;Says petition lacks constitutional requirements"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By George Mgbeleke, Abuja<\/p>\n<p>Barely 24 hours after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) received about six bags of signatures from\u00a0 Senator Natasha Uduagha&#8217;s petitioners calling for her from Senate\u00a0 as the representative of Kogi Central Senatorial district, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)has rejected the their submission as faulty.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2240\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2240\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2240\" src=\"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG-20250222-WA0011-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG-20250222-WA0011-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG-20250222-WA0011-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG-20250222-WA0011-768x766.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG-20250222-WA0011-80x80.jpg 80w, https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/IMG-20250222-WA0011.jpg 843w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2240\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Senator Natasha Agboti -U<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In a statement by the National Commissioner &amp; Chairman<br \/>\nInformation and Voter Education Committee, Mr Sam Olumekun the representatives of the petitioners did not provide their contact address, telephone number(s) and e-mail address(es) in the covering letter forwarded to the commission.<\/p>\n<p>The statement noted in part,&#8221;The Commission&#8217;s immediate observation is that the representatives of the petitioners did not provide their contact address, telephone number(s) and e-mail address(es) in the covering letter forwarding the petition through which they can be contacted as provided in Clause 1(f) of our Regulations and Guidelines. The address given is &#8220;Okene, Kogi State&#8221;, which is not a definite location for contacting the petitioners. Only the telephone number of &#8220;the lead petitioner&#8221; is provided as against the numbers of all the other representatives of the petitioners.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Commission wishes to reiterate that the recall of a legislator is the prerogative of registered voters in a constituency who sign a petition indicating loss of confidence in the legislator representing them. Once the petition meets the requirements of submission, as contained in our regulations, the Commission shall commence the verification of the signatures in each Polling Unit in an open process restricted to registered voters that signed the petition only.<\/p>\n<p>&#8221; The petitioners and the member whose recall is sought shall be at liberty to nominate agents to observe the verification, while interested observers and the media will also be accredited. At each Polling Unit, signatories to the petition shall be verified using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, he said, &#8220;if the petitioners fully comply with the requirements of Clause 1(f) of the Regulations and Guidelines regarding the submission of their petition, the Commission will announce the next steps in line with the extant laws, regulations and guidelines. In the absence of a definite contact address, the Commission is making efforts to use other means to notify the representatives of the petitioners of the situation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The commissioner further explained,&#8221;The process of recall is enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, the Electoral Act 2022 as well as the Commission\u2019s detailed Regulations and Guidelines for Recall 2024, available on our website. All petitions will be treated in strict compliance with the legal framework.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The petition from Kogi Central Senatorial District was accompanied by six bags of documents said to be signatures collected from over half of the 474,554 registered voters spread across 902 Polling Units in 57 Registration Areas (Wards) in the five Local Government Areas of Adavi, Ajaokuta, Ogori\/Magongo, Okehi and Okene.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; By George Mgbeleke, Abuja Barely 24 hours after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) received about six bags of signatures from\u00a0 Senator Natasha Uduagha&#8217;s petitioners calling for her from Senate\u00a0 as the representative of Kogi Central Senatorial district, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)has rejected the their submission as faulty. In a statement by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[386,859,54,1911,1910,1909,1908],"class_list":["post-2992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-constitution","tag-petition","tag-recall","tag-rejected","tag-requirements","tag-signatures","tag-submission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2993,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions\/2993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}