- INORDINATE ALUTA CONTINUA TO MANUFACTURE A SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE FOR APC
- APC DIDN’T HAVE ANY CANDIDATE IN THE SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2020 BYE-ELECTION
- PDP, OKEWULONU WON LEGALLY, LAWFULLY AND SHOULD BE GIVEN CERTIFICATE OF RETURN
Ogu Bundu Nwadike, M.A
Fresh judgements Thursday, March 18, 2021, on various lawsuits filed over who’s the authentic candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) in the Imo North (Okigwe Zone) Senatorial District bye-election has continued to prove that the party didn’t have any candidate in the December 5, 2020 bye-election.
On Thursday, March 18, 2021, while an Abuja High Court ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to within 72 hours issue Senator Ifeanyi Araraume the Certificate of Return as the APC candidate and winner of the bye-election, on the same day, an Owerri High Court acting on a suit filed by the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in a counter, ordered INEC not to dare to issue Senator Ifeanyi Araraume the Certificate of Return until aspects of the suit was heard by the Court.
We recall that earlier on Monday, March 15, 2021 an Abuja Court rejected the application that prayed that the Certificate of Return be issued to Mr. Frank Ibezim, one of the APC candidates who was disqualified by the High Courts and Court of Appeal as an illegal candidate in the bye-election.
Earlier, in February 2021, the Supreme Court upheld the earlier judgements by the High Court and Court of Appeal that Senator Ifeanyi Araraume wasn’t the authentic APC candidate in the bye-election.
In summation, what the Courts have been judging and have concluded, which they seem to lack the guts and will to declare, is that neither Araraume nor Ibezim was APC candidate in the bye-election and as such that APC had no legitimate candidate in the bye-election.
It’s absurd and worrisome that in Nigeria a lower court would undermine and overturn the judgement of the Apex Court of Nigeria and declare as winner a person that was earlier disqualified by the Supreme Court, ordering that the Certificate of Return be issued to him, in spite of his disqualification by the highest and last Court of the land.
Incidentally, another High Court countered the Court Order issued by another High Court and stopped INEC from issuing the Certificate of Return to Araraume. Talk about clash of Court Orders by Nigerian Courts! Phew!!
Hence, as it is now, APC still doesn’t have any candidate in the Imo North Senatorial bye-election, after over 100 days of the bye-election. Wonders shall never cease!
Pundits have since concluded that what’s going on now with that bye-election, as it relates to the APC, is that the Courts still entertain suits thrown upon them from the multiple camps of the same APC and their different candidates, struggling to manufacture a candidate for APC for yet undisclosed and indeterminate reasons.
Obviously, that illegal and unlawful act must be embarrassing both to the APC, the Nigerian judiciary, Nigerians and the interested world.
Unfortunately and sadly, while the debacle continues, while the external and internal godfathers and godsons squabble like the elephants they are, doing their tug-of-war, the good people of Okigwe Zone suffer lack of a representative in the Senate, with the life and lease of the 9th Senate steadily rolling and running out.
It’s incomprehensible why in the face of solution to the quagmire, the political and legal system still prefer to connive and conspire to persevere in upholding the illegality of manufacturing a candidate for APC that didn’t have any candidate in the bye-election.
The most plausible legal solution remains to declare PDP and Distinguished Chief Emmanuel Okewulonu the winner of the Okigwe Zone bye-election and give him the Certificate of Return.
9News Nigeria (Owerri)
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