WIFE OF EX-SGF, EKAETTE, REJECTS N' ASSEMBLY PRIMARIES

Senator Eme Ekaette, wife of the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Ufot Ekaette, has petitioned the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega over the National Assembly primaries in Akwa Ibom State.

She demanded the probe of the INEC report of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)'s National Assembly primaries in the state and the officials who monitored the primaries to ascertain their culpability in the primaries with a view to redressing the situation as deemed appropriate.

Ekaette, a serving senator representing Eket Senatorial District of the state in the petition dated January 14, 2011 accused the INEC officials who monitored the primaries held on January 7, as having been compromised to write a report that did not reflect what transpired during the primaries.

Picking holes in the report of the INEC officials, she explained that the commission representatives failed to indicate in their report that the PDP ward congresses in the state which was scheduled for December 28, 2011 and from where the delegates to elect the National Assembly candidates should have emerged but which never held.

Besides, the senator was at a loss how the report of the INEC representatives who monitored the primaries meant to be an internal memo could be published as advertorial in the newspaper for the public to see, even when the report was very contradictory to what happened during the primaries. From the report, Senator Ekaette raised some nine posers for the INEC chairman to clarify, if indeed the primaries went the way it was painted in the report.

She stated: 'Were the presence of armed soldiers in a peaceful political party primaries within the consideration of your report be considered to be free and fair? If this is in affirmative, was the explosion and the manhandling of citizen Anthony Etifit by soldiers at the Eket stadium premises which occasioned the death of the said late Anthony Etifit whose case and autopsy report are with the police in Akwa Ibom State be reasonably considered to be a fair and free process?

In an apparent rejection of the primaries, Ekaette, in her petition which she also copied the State Security Service, alleged that the INEC officials in a manner suggesting they had been induced, failed in their duties to make available the true happenings during the primaries, when they did not capture the violence or the incident in their advertised report to justify the fairness as contained in other independent reports.