Amori Failure At The Appeal Court, A Justification For Nullification Of Delta Governorship Election Result
The Court of Appeal in Benin City, the Edo State capital last Saturday upturned the ruling of the Delta State election tribunal which affirmed the victory of Chief Ighoyota Amori as the duly elected Senator representing Delta Central Senatorial District in Delta State.
Prior to the tribunal judgement, Chief Amori then a serving Senator in the 8th Senate organized a lavished victory party at this country home in Mosogar in Ethiope West, alleged to have gulped a whopping N100 million. The State Governor and his cabinet members, political appointees, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Speaker of House of Representatives, Rt Honourable Dogara and political heavyweights of PDP across the country were in attendance. Unknowingly, Chief Amori was actually celebrating his exit from the Red Chambers.
Reacting to the Appellate Court ruling, Director of Strategic Political Communication of Rescue Delta Media Group (RDMG) cum South-South APC-Grassroots Mobilizers for Buhari (GMB), Dr. Fred Latimore Oghenesivbe said the recent outcome of rulings of the Court of Appeal in Akwa Ibom, Rivers and now Delta Central cases, have become substantial proof that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) then the national government, aided State governors and its candidates financially and provided fierce security logistics which enabled them to rig elections extensively in Delta, Rivers and Akwam Ibom States, among others.
RDMG and GMB South-South APC posited that when the Delta State Chapter of the party and its candidate, Olorogun Otega Emerhor (OON) cried out that some compromised Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) staff and Chieftains of the PDP conspired to rig elections in the state through over voting and illegal allocation of votes, the PDP denied claiming that it deserves victories credited to all her candidates in the State, including the results of Delta Central Senatorial District. They managed to run-way with some of the victories at the Appeal Court in Benin except Delta Central.
Oghenesivbe asserted that the quashing of the Senatorial Election Result in Delta Central is a proof that Nigeria still have Judges with solid pedigree, who will not sell their consciences for trillion of United States dollar. He said the Delta governorship election Appeal now awaiting judgment may turnout to be the last straw that will break the backbones of the PDP and INEC to correct the unfair miscarriage of justice perpetuated by the tribunal panel which sat in Asaba, Delta State.
The group said APC Delta had made if clear that PDP candidate cannot be declared winner of the governorship election when 715,392 total number of accredited and captured voters is far less than the 724,680 Okowa winning votes. What this implies is that Okowa and PDP garnered the entire 715,392 votes captured by the Card Readers, leaving no votes for APC and Labour Party candidates. It did not stop there. The alleged manual accreditation added more votes to Okowa's winning votes after claiming all card readers accredited votes. What a wonder? This is what I call "primitive rigging."
The APC Delta Publicist is however happy that the Appeal Court rulings in governorship elections in Akwa Ibom and Rivers States stressed the need for INEC field officers during elections to comply with the electoral and manual guidelines as well as abide by lawful instructions and directives of the INEC as the umpire electoral body.
The Honourable Justices of the Appeal Court stated that for manual accreditation to be valid and its votes to be counted along with those captured by card readers, the manual accreditation must be accompanied with duly completed and signed Incidents Forms (IF) otherwise votes recorded under manual accreditation will be null and void. To this effect, the Court of Appeal in APC vs PDP in Akwa Ibom governorship election nullified the entire results and declared rerun in all local government areas instead of the 18 local governments earlier ordered by the tribunal.
It is hoped that in line with the sound judgements in respect of Rivers and Akwa Ibom governorship Appeal matters, vexed issues of substantial miscarriage of justice which was alleged to have characterized Justice Gumni's panel ruling will be corrected and adequate justice dispensed in favour of the petitioners so as to re-claim the stolen mandate of the good people of Delta State, the statement added.