The National Chairman of Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) Chief Peter Ojonugwa Ameh, yesterday emerged as the new chairman of Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC, pledging to make the body an independent association that will not be under the influence or control of any political party or the electoral body.
Ameh's election followed the decision of the appeals committee which nullified last month's election of the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Movement, PDM, Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim.
Recall that shortly after the election, Ameh had petitioned the IPAC election appeals committee, alleging that the election which was held at the conference room of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was marred with some irregularities, as the representatives of the Alliance for Democracy, AD and All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, were barred from taking part, leading to the ordering of a re-run by the appeals committee.
All national chairmen of the 16 political parties who were present at the re-run voted for the PPA chairman while his opponent, PDM National Chairman, Ibrahin absented himself, insisting that he was the authentic chairman that is recognised by INEC.
Speaking before the election, the chairman of the Electoral Committee, Ganiyu Oseni Galadima, who is also the National Chairman of Action Congress party of Nigeria, ACPN, regretted the decision of Ibrahim to boycott the re-run, noting that the re-run had to be conducted for the position of chairman following the decision of the election appeals committee which nullified the election of the PDM chairman and ordered for a fresh election.
However, Chief Ameh while speaking after his inauguration by the out-gone chairman of IPAC, Dr. Yusuf Tanko, pledged to reach out to members of all the 29 registered political parties to protect the country’s democracy.
Ameh noted that IPAC under his leadership will endeavour to be an independent association that will not be under the influence or control of any political party or INEC.
He said: “My election today is in the face of truth and justice. It has taught me a big lesson that we must be fair to each other and treat all Nigerians as equal, irrespective of tribe or religion. We will be fair to all political parties and bring everybody on board in the interest of developing Nigerian democracy.
“We will move IPAC out of the control of INEC or any political party to where we can confront the challenges of poverty and hunger that is standing against the development of our electoral process by collaborating with every government agency to ensure that we eradicate all the corrupt tendencies that had negatively affected our electoral process.”
In his remarks earlier, the former chairman, Yinusa who handed over to Ameh, pledged to work with the new leadership of IPAC to fasten the process of reconciliation of all aggrieved political parties for the purpose of protecting the development of democracy in the country.