The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Saturday, warned the All Progressives Congress (APC) to desist from its attempts to sway the Supreme Court to jettison the consensus demand by Nigerians for a judicial review and reversal of the defective judgment on the Imo State governorship election.

In a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, the party also cautioned the APC to end its blackmail and lobbying in the corridors of the judiciary with a view to influencing the Supreme Court to snub Nigerians and disregard calls to correct its manifest mistakes on the Imo judgment.

The PDP further berated APC leaders, particularly its National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, 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, “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 note 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 incontestable as the Supreme Court itself had in the past reversed its judgment after realising 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.

“This, our party and Nigerians believe, 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.

“The envisaged review of the judgement will benefit all in many ways such as:

“Aligning the result of the election 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 voters.

“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.”

The party declared that “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 party stated that it was aware that the APC was mortally afraid of the review as they knew that duty beckoned on the Supreme Court to hand justice in the matter and give victory to the rightful winner.

According to it, “this is why the APC has resorted to blackmailing the judiciary and seeking ways to divert public attention from the issue at stake.”

It, therefore, urged the Supreme Court to be courageous in conducting the review as a duty it owed to redeem the image of the judiciary as well as save the nation from impending political and constitutional crisis. (Nigerian Tribune)

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