Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court, Lagos, has granted the prayer of the Labour Party, LP, seeking an order to bar the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, from using the chairman of the Lagos Parks and Garages, Musliu Akinsanya, better known as MC Oluomo, for distributing election materials in Lagos.
The court granted “an order of interlocutory injunction filed by the Labour Party and five others restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (defendant/respondent), whether by itself or by its officers, affiliates, servants, privies or agents or any person acting or purporting to act for and on behalf howsoever from taking any steps or further steps whatsoever in furtherance of the engagement or appointment or consummating the appointment of Musiliu Akinsanya, popularly known as MC Oluomo-led Lagos State Parks Management Committee or any of its commercial bus drivers to distribute 2023 election materials and personnel in Lagos State pending the hearing and determination the substantive suit.”
According to reports, INEC in Lagos State responded to criticism after MC Oluomo requested in a letter that the electoral umpire award him the contract for the distribution of materials by claiming that it (INEC) was working with parks administrators in the state rather than MC Oluomo.
Olusegun Agbaje, the residential election commissioner for Lagos State, had stated, “On the issue of MC Oluomo, the commission is not concerned with Oluomo. We are concerned with the issue of motor park administration in Lagos.
“For the past two years, the Lagos State government has banned the operations of the NURTW and RTEAN in the state. They had problems and the state government banned them.
“So we are left with Lagos State Park and Garages and the National Association of Road Transport Owners,” adding that NARTO, which, according to him, the commission was already working with, “is not able to meet up with the 40 per cent needs of the commission for this election,” hence the commission’s consideration of engaging the MC Oluomo-led Lagos State Parks and Garages.
“We are not dealing with MC Oluomo,” Agbaje had said, adding that “we are dealing with park managers. They are individual persons that have vehicles that we are going to use for the elections.
“The law has already banned the NURTW from operating in the state so we cannot violate the law by patronising them.
“It will be we working against the law if we have to be working with the banned associations. So it cannot work.”