The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State has rejected the decisions of the Governorship, National, and State Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal that dismissed the petitions of its governorship candidate, Tonye Cole and all its national and state assembly candidates.
The APC in a statement signed on Thursday, October 5, by its Spokesman, Darlington Nwauju, said considered the reason for dismissing the petition of Cole as hypothetical and inconsistent with the positions of the Supreme Court.
Nwauju recalled that the apex court had on the 14th of November 2003 in the case of Buhari & 2 Others Vs Obasanjo & 2 Others (Suit No. SC/194/2003 (Buhari Vs Obasanjo), held that a candidate in an election could not be one and the same person with the political party that sponsored him and that the law gave them independent and distinct personality and rights.
He said the supreme court also held that they could file election petition together in their individual capacities insisting that the law did not make them one and the same for the purposes of the petition.
Nwauju said,
“This is even made clearer by the construction of Section 133 subsection 1 of the amended Electoral Act (2022) where the Act unambiguously mentions those qualified to institute/file an election petition.
“We make haste to say that the three-man panel headed by Justice Cletus Emifonye allowed itself to be ambushed by purely political innuendos rather than speaking to the law which is abundantly clear as enumerated in the paragraph above.
“This judgement of the Tribunal delivered on Monday 2nd October 2023 amounts to a mockery of the judiciary as a lower court disdainly trashed the position of the highest Court in the land as it is common knowledge that whatever the position of the Supreme Court is on a matter, becomes law.
“The 2nd of October ruling confirmed the fears of Rivers APC about getting justice in the face of iron cast evidences presented by our team of lawyers at the Tribunal which includes the fact that the PDP Governorship candidate was as at the time he became candidate of his political party, still a serving Accountant General of Rivers State.
“It goes without saying that the preponderance of arguments and evidences our legal team marshalled out in the other petitions involving our National Assembly and House of Assembly candidates were equally dismissed by brother judges who presided over the other Tribunals hearing our cases.”
Nwauju said the APC condemned what it described as the series of “copy and paste” rulings aimed at weakening its base in Rivers state and called on the judiciary in the country not to jeopardize the democratic process by delivering rulings that had no foundation in law.
He said,
“Not challenging and dismantling these hypothetical rulings against our candidates amounts to disservice to the memories of hundreds of members lost to the orgy of violence that has trailed political activities in Rivers State.
“We wish to also clarify that at no time did the National Working Committee (NWC) of our party under H.E Abdullahi Adamu meet to discuss/ratify the withdrawal of our petitions from the Election Petitions Tribunal, as neither the State Chapter nor our candidate(s) was(were) ever consulted on this vexatious topic.”
