The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Thursday blasted Lauretta Onochie, a president’s aide for saying she stopped being a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2019.
Onochie’s denial, according to the PDP is a desperate attempt to be appointed as a national commissioner in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
President Muhammadu Buhari in October 2020 sent the names of six nominees, including that of Onochie, but her nomination was greeted with outrage over her membership of APC.
Buhari again renominated her alongside other nominees and the Senate president referred the matter to the Senate Committee on INEC.
On Thursday, the Senate Committee on INEC, led by Senator Kabiru Gaya screened all the six nominees whose names were sent to the Senate. Nominees screened along with Onochie were Professor Muhammad Sani Kallah, (Katsina); Professor Kunle Cornelius Ajayi (Ekiti); Saidu Babura Ahmad (Jigawa); Professor Sani Muhammad Adam SAN ( North Central) and Dr Baba Bila (North East). Addressing the committee, Onochie admitted to being a card-carrying member of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
She, however, claimed that she ceased being a member after President Buhari was returned to office in the last general election held in 2019. She disclosed that she served in the Buhari Campaign Organisation but had stopped working for the group. “I have seen the petitions written against me. It is instructive to note that it also came from members of the APC.
“Nobody has anything to fear, if I get this role because I will be working for the people of the South South to ensure that their votes count, irrespective of religion or political affiliations. I am for due process. That’s why the attack is coming because I follow the law, I follow due process.”
Senators took her to task on her capacity to discharge her functions without bias in INEC if cleared by the red chamber.
But Onochie maintained that the nation has nothing to fear as she further claimed that she refused to participate in the APC membership registration and revalidation exercise in order to properly exit herself from politics.
Reacting to her claims, the PDP in a statement issued by Kola Ologbondiyan, its national publicity secretary, said Onochie disowned APC because of her desperation to become INEC commissioner at all cost.
“Nigerians were amused to watch Lauretta Onochie, a nationally known APC front runner, as she spewed falsehood before the Senator Kabiru Gaya-led Senate Committee on INEC in denial of her membership of the APC.
“With her lies, Lauretta Onochie, a dyed-in-the-wool APC member, whose name appears as number 2 on the ward 4 register of the APC in Aniocha Local Government Area of Delta State, has further demonstrated her lack of integrity to be trusted with the position of a national commissioner in INEC.
“Lauretta Onochie in her escapade in the Senate may have forgotten that the lawmakers and Nigerians, in general, are aware of her subsisting oath filed in a pending suit in court affirming her membership of the APC, which she further reinforced and adopted under cross-examination in the same matter very recently. “With such proclivity to desperate denials in the face of the truth, allowing Lauretta Onochie anywhere near INEC would pollute the commission as well as the conduct of elections by the commission.
“Now that the facts of Onochie’s partisanship have been further laid bare before the Senate, the PDP urges the Senator Gaya Committee on INEC to stand on the side of the constitution and the sanctity of our electoral process by rejecting outright the nomination of Lauretta Onochie as INEC commissioner”, the party said.
