Embattled Senator Dino Melaye representing Kogi West Senatorial District fled the National Assembly Complex, Abuja, on Tuesday, to avoid being served notice of recall by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The officials, however, left four ‘Ghana must go’ bags containing petition by Melaye’s constituents to recall him at the door of his locked office.
While some of the INEC officials waited at senator’s door, others took positions at various entrances between the office and the Senate chamber.
Melaye, who was in the chamber for the day’s plenary, hurriedly left at about 1.45pm while the session was ongoing, rushed into a waiting car at the main entrance of the complex – the closest to the chamber – and drove off.
His aides, who could have received the notice on his behalf, were sighted around the Senate chamber.
In a phone chat with PREMIUM TIMES, INEC’s Director of Publicity and Voters’ Education, Oluwole Ozzi, claimed that the embattled lawmaker ”ran away” to avoid being served.
He added that the electoral body would drag him to court over the matter again on Thursday.
“We tried to serve him but he refused service and ran away,” Ozzi said.
Melaye had, at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, said the 90-day deadline set for INEC by Section 69b of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) had expired.
He said: “The 90-day period, as provided for in the constitution for conducting the referendum (after our verification), elapsed by effluxion of time on the 23rd day of September 2017.
“The time, as provided for in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having elapsed by effluxion of time, I, Senator Dino Melaye, cannot and shall not under any circumstance, aid and abet INEC to further desecrate and infringe on the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which I have sworn to defend.”
