FIEIT nullifies election of State Minister for Finance over violation of 30% quota rule

The Omar Abdulle (pictured) team said the election of State Minister for Finance as MP violated the 30% rule for women representation. File Photo: Amisom

The Federal electoral body FIEIT has dismissed the election of State Minister for Finance Abdullahi Mohamed Nur as MP in HirShabelle for what it terms as violation of the women quota rule.

In a statement to the HirShabelle state electoral body and HirShabelle President Ali Abdullahi Osoble, the FIEIT said the election of Nur and another candidate Mohamed Abukar Islow from Agoonyare and Abokor violated the NLF declaration which aimed at achieving the 30% quota for women.

The National Leadership Forum said in a communique September that if a clan has three (3) seats in the House of the People, one of the seats should be contested exclusively by the women of that clan.

Further it observed, other clans who are consanguinely related, their seats will be aggregated according to their consanguinity and relations, and then one seat which is exclusively contested by women is required to be selected from each three seats.

A violation of this provision would lead to the seat would be suspended until the SIEITs (state level electoral bodies) and the Regional State make a final decision on the seats.

Accordingly, the both Agoonyare and Abokor were to aggregate their seats, three in total and reserve one for a female candidate but that was never the case since the seat was contested by State Minister for Finance Abdullahi Mohamed Nur among other candidates.

The declaration comes barely three days after the electoral body and the dispute resolution team said it would nullify elections or disqualify candidates should it establish violation of electoral rules.

The FIEIT and dispute resolution mechanism IEDRM warned in a joint statement Thursday it was perturbed by failure of some clans to adhere to the 30% quota for women as instructed in the September NLF communique.

“This rule needs to be respected in all the upcoming elections. Failure to fulfill this requirement will result in the action by the FIEIT and IEDRM against the offending clans both in the past and upcoming elections,” a statement from the electoral bodies noted.