The Enugu State local government election scheduled to hold on November 4 is threatened as the All Progressives Congress (APC) has sued the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Enugu State Independent Electoral Commission (ENSIEC) one week to the poll.
ENSIEC had last week disqualified 73 candidates of the APC from participating in the election, but reversed itself on Thursday.
But the APC on Friday filed a suit at the Federal High Court in Enugu to compel the electoral bodies to publish the names of its candidates for the election before the poll would hold on Saturday.
The state chairman of APC, Dr Ben Nwoye, Okoye Hillary Monday and Philip Ogechukwu Eze filed the suit on behalf of the candidates of the party while the ENSIEC and INEC are joined as 1st and 2nd defendants in the suit respectively.
The APC in the motion on notice seeks among others: “An order mandating the first respondent to publish the list of names of the 260 candidates for councilorship positions of various wards and 17 candidates for local government chairmen submitted to them by the applicants as their validly nominated candidates to contest for the November 2017 Local Government/councilorship election pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit.
“An order restraining the 2nd respondent from releasing the voters’ registers of Enugu State to the 1st respondent for the purpose of conducting and organizing the chairmanship and councilorship elections in the local government areas of Enugu State until the names of the candidates presented by the applicants are included and published.”
Hearing date in the matter is yet to be known.