Stop Manipulating Supreme Court On Imo Judgment – PDP Warns APC

• Charges apex Court on integrity, justice

BY VICTOR BUORO, ABUJA – The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not meeting the steam off on the controversial Supreme Court judgment on Imo State governorship election, accusing the All Progressives Congress (APC) of attempting to manipulate the apex Court to jettisons Nigerians’ demand for a judicial review and reversal of its ruling.

Also warning the ruling party to desist from blackmailing the judiciary, the PDP maintained that no amount of underhand lobbying would negatively influence the apex Court to snub Nigerians and disregard growing calls that its manifest mistakes on the Imo case be corrected without further delay.

In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the nation’s main opposition party is not mincing words accusing the APC of “blackmailing the judiciary and seeking ways to divert public attention from the issue at stake.”

Consequently, the party urged the Supreme Court to be “courageous in conducting the review as a duty it owes to redeem the image of the judiciary as well as save our nation from impeding political and constitutional crisis.”

The APC leaders, particularly its embattled National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, also came under the PDP’s fire “for attacking Nigerians and blackmailing the judiciary with distortions, manipulations and misrepresentations of facts aimed at diverting attention as well as cowing the Supreme Court from delivering justice in the impending review.”

According to the statement issued in Abuja on Saturday, the Party said; “It is worrisome that the national chairman of a political party will be making a public boast of a daylight political robbery and parading those who don’t mean well for the future of Imo State.

“While the PDP notes that it is a waste of time to join issues with Adams Oshiomhole in his blackmail and misinformation, our party affirms that our demand remains incontestible as the Supreme Court itself had in the past reversed its judgment after realizing defects and subversion of justice in its judgment. The case of Johnson vs Lawanson (1971) 7 NSCC 82 is a clear precedence.

“We in the PDP believe in the finality of the judgment of the Supreme Court. But we also believe that the Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court possess inherent right and powers to right every wrong that may be discovered in its judgment arising, as it were, from human errors such as happened in the Imo State judgment.

“We trust that the apex Court will not be persuaded by the ill motivated campaigns of blackmail launched by the embattled Chairman of the APC from seizing the initiative presented by the application of Hon Emeka Ihedioha and our Party to delete this unjust page from the annals of clean records of justice.”

The statement insisted that the PDP and Nigerians believe reversal of the ruling “will restore and strengthen the confidence of every well meaning Nigerian in the judiciary as the beacon of justice, vanguard of the rule, democratic principles, the sanctity of the electoral process and universal suffrage as well as the last hope of the common man always represented by a virile opposition which the PDP represents.”

Explaining that the envisaged review of the judgement will benefit all Nigerians in many ways, the PDP said such Include:

“1. Aligning the election results with the total accredited votes which form the benchmark for all results in every electoral contest by correcting the ugly and unprecedented situation where the result as laid down by the Supreme Court is more than the total accredited votes.

“2. It will also correct the illogicality of having two governorship candidates for the APC in the same election as the apex Court had earlier ruled that Uche Nwosu was the validly nominated candidate of the APC and not Senator Hope Uzodinma declared by the Court as the winner of the same election on the platform of the same APC. The Supreme Court had also disqualified Uche Nwosu, the candidate of the Action Alliance (AA) from the election for having acquired the governorship ticket of two political parties; the APC and the AA.”

For the PDP, “A judicial review on Imo governorship election is inevitable because by these earlier judgements of the Supreme Court, not only is Hope Uzodimma not a candidate, the judgements also nullified all votes credited to APC and AA as they no longer have candidates in the election.

“The PDP is aware that the APC is mortally afraid of the review as they know that duty beckons on the Supreme court to hand justice in the matter and give victory to the rightful winner.”

Accusing the APC of “blackmailing the judiciary and seeking ways to divert public attention from the issue at stake”, the PDP said the Supreme Court must be “courageous in conducting the review as a duty it owes to redeem the image of the judiciary as well as save our nation from impeding political and constitutional crisis.”