From Magnus Eze, Abuja

Ahead of next month’s election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it will publish the list of eligible candidates eligible tomorrow.
This was as the Conference of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), yesterday, urged Nigerians to rise against what it described as premeditated onslaught of some politicians on INEC.
INEC Director of Voter Education, Mr. Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, who spoke at CSOs Roundtable on Emerging Issues on the Ondo State governorship election, in Abuja, expressed worry over conflicting court orders on the candidacy of some parties but maintained that the commission would act within the law.
He described as an aberration attempts by some persons to emerge candidates of their parties through the courts, noting that the desire of the commission was for the political parties to determine their candidates and not the courts.
The INEC Director stated that the unfolding scenario negated the tenets of the rule of law especially when the orders are from courts of equal jurisdictions.
“Each party is entitled to one candidate. There is no way a party would have two candidates,” he stated.
Osase-Uzzi said lessons had been learnt from the recently held Edo governorship election, considering that the similarities of the two states also disclosed that 16,700 ad-hoc staff have been recruited and duly trained for the election.
In their separate contributions, Mr. Ezenwa Nwagwu and‎ Mr. Majeed Dahiru urged Nigerians to wake up and insist that election was all about the people, stressing that if the challenge was not confronted now, the country might end up in 2019 having people who did not contest election being in power.
“Nigerians must defend INEC from the onslaughts of politicians. Once they succeed in discrediting the commission by making it look corrupt and incompetent; it brings the credibility of the process and outcomes to question.
“So, the court can’t take the place of people in a democracy. Not even when a court order in Nigeria is cheaper than a bag of rice. It’s so easy to procure court order from the black market,” Nwagwu stated.