Ihedioha’s Purported Application For Review: Insult To Nigerians, Judicial System… APC Chieftain

Chieftain of the APC has condemned the purported application by Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha for a review of the supreme court judgment which nullified his election as the Imo State governor.

Hon. Austin Okezie who frowned at the application by the immediate past Governor of Imo state, Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha for a review of the supreme court judgment that removed him and installed Senator Hope Uzodinma as the rightful winner of the Imo State governorship election held on the 9th of March 2019, described the move as an insult to the image of the country.

Okezie, who was the APC House of Assembly Candidate for Umuahia East state constituency of the Abia House of Assembly during 2019 election, opined that such application would amount to a mockery of the judicial system, and an insult to majority of Nigerians.

Famous News recalls that PDP National chairman, Uche Secondus, had said that the PDP, after extensive consultations with legal experts, had decided to fully back Emeka Ihedioha, the sacked governor of Imo State, as he returns to the Supreme Court to seek a review and possible reversal of the January 14 judgement.

However, Austin Okezie, in a press statement made available to journalists, on Tuesday, in Umuahia, Abia state capital, argued that Ihedioha and his team of lawyers ought to have known that the supreme court was thorough in order in that judgment, going by the available evidence before it, adding that Ihedioha and the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) are simply leveraging on the gullibility of some Nigerians to curry unnecessary sympathy.

According to the statement which read partly:

“The issue at hand is being presented wrongly, possibly deliberately, in order to mislead some Nigerians into believing that the supreme court erred in that judgment. In so many quarters, it is being reported that it was only a police officer, as a witness, who presented the 388 results as evidence at the tribunal, a deviation from the electoral act which holds that results/evidence ought to be presented by either an INEC personnel or an agent of the party at the election”.

“However, this narrative is not true because at the Imo State tribunal, duplicates of the 388 results were originally presented by various party (APC) agents called by Sen. Hope as witnesses. The police officer only appeared to corroborate the initial evidence presented by the various party agents. Besides, the 388 polling units results in question were duly certified by INEC, so why wouldn’t they be accepted as valid evidence?”

“It is hypocritical for PDP as a party to start inciting gullible Nigerians into condemning this impeccable judgment by the Supreme Court, insinuating that the CJN Mohammed Tanko was favourable to APC. As a matter of fact, it was this same CJN who led the 5-man team of Supreme court justices that sacked all the duly elected APC persons in Zamfara State ( the governor and his deputy, all the house of assembly members, all the federal house of reps members and all the elected senators from Zamfara) and replaced them with their PDP counter parts”.

“This same Justice Tanko was also the CJN when the supreme court disqualified all the APC candidates from participating in Rivers State election in 2019, thereby giving PDP a very smooth and unopposed ride. And just last week, this same supreme court under Mohammed Tanko as CJN ruled to affirm the election of Sokoto state PDP governor (Tambuwal) who won the APC guber candidate with less than a meagre three hundred and fifty (350) votes, while the cancelled votes stood at over thirty thousand (30,000)”.

“In all these, APC took the outcome with maturity, believing that the Supreme Court as the highest arbiter in Nigeria must have acted in consonance
with the law. If all these have happened, Why would Ihedioha and his allies in PDP want to deceive some Nigerians into
believing that the CJN and the supreme court gave the Imo State judgment because, they were always against the PDP, and in favour of APC”.

“A one time US Attorney General and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Robert Houghwout Jackson, had said that “we are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final”. This fact is said to have been reaffirmed by late Justice Chukwudifu Oputa of blessed memories”.

“So purportedly calling on the international community to condemn the judgment of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and have them review and reverse same in favour of PDP is the height of irresponsibility, with a tendency to rubbish our judicial system. Because,if the so called review is entertained, then every other person who loses at the Supreme Court must have one or two reasons to apply for a reversal.

“And it is even a big irony that this same Ihedioha who is purportedly calling for the reversal of the judgment to favour him shouldn’t have been declared winner of the election by INEC in the first place, because he never secured the constitutionally required 1/4 of the votes in 2/3 of the local governments of Imo state. And it is obvious that the PDP
members in the Imo State House of Assembly must have realised the truth hence their decisions to defect to APC in order to join hands with the duly elected APC governor in moving the state forward. So, Ihedioha and his allies in PDP should simply do Nigerians a favour by restraining from this trending noise, and allow the duly elected Senator Hope Uzodinma to concentrate with the job of developing Imo state”.