The Enugu State Independent Electoral Commission (ENSIEC) has disqualified 15 candidates ahead of local government elections of Nov.2.
Those disqualified include two chairmanship candidates and their deputies, and 12 councillorship candidates.
The Chairman of the commission, Dr Boniface Eneh, made this known in Enugu on Monday.
Eneh alleged that the candidates did not pay their taxes as at when due and at the appropriate place.
He said that the All Progressives Congress (APC) had 14 candidates, while the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), had two councillorship candidates.
The chairman said many of the candidates got their tax clearance certificates outside their state of residents while others presented `fake’ ones.
“Somebody claim he live and work in Enugu for 30 years, but presented a tax clearance certificate from Ebonyi and Kogi.
“It is wrong to present tax certificates from outside the state they are residing. Based on that, they were disqualified,’’ he said.
Eneh denied the APC allegation that the disqualification letter of its candidates came a day after the expiration for substitution of candidates.
He, however, said that some of the political parties did not have functional offices, adding: “most of the time, their offices are locked and there is nobody to collect their mails.
“So, we use courier services which also return the mails to us because they cannot find anybody.
“We also have a time table for the elections which we gave to the political parties during a meeting with them, but they did not make use of it,’’ he said.
The chairman said the APC, African Liberation Party (ALP), APGA, National Solidarity Democratic Party (NSDP) and PDP were participating in the elections.
In a reaction, the Chairman of the APC Local Government Electoral Committee, Dr Ben Nwoye, threatened to restrain the commission from conducting the election following the disqualification of its candidates.
“The disqualification of the party’s candidates was an afterthought as they fulfilled all the requirements, including presentation of tax clearance certificates.
“They were earlier cleared on Oct. 11 only for ENSIEC to reverse it on Oct. 14,’’ he said.
Nwoye described the disqualification as “a rape on democracy’’, and called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and law enforcement agencies to prevail on ENSIEC to be fair to all.
