Rivers APC rejects rulings of election petition tribunal against candidates

After the Governorship, National, and State Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal ruled against the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State, dismissing the petitions of the party’s gubernatorial candidate Patrick Tonye-Cole and all of its senate and house candidates, the party vowed to appeal the decision.

The APC said in a statement released to the press in PortHarcourt that the court’s reasoning for dismissing its governorship candidate’s petition was “hypothetical and inconsistent with the position of the Supreme Court,” which had ruled on the issue in the case of Buhari and two others vs. Obasanjo and two others (Suit No. SC/194/2003 (Buhari Vs. Obasanjo) on November 14, 2003.

As the statement put it, “This is even made clearer by the construction of Section 133 subsection 1 of the amended Electoral Act (2022), where the Act unambiguously mentions those qualified to institute/file an election petition.” This means that even if two or more candidates file a petition together, they remain separate legal entities for the purposes of the petition.

The party released a statement Thursday signed by the state Publicity Secretary, Darlington Nwauju, saying the three-man panel headed by Cletus Emifonye, allowed itself to be “ambushed by purely political innuendos rather than speaking to the law, which is abundantly clear as enumerated in the paragraph above.”

According to Nwauju, the Supreme Court order was ignored in the Tribunal’s 2 October 2023 judgement, making a mockery of the judicial system.

Despite evidence by the party that Governor Siminialayi Fubara, the then candidate of the PDP, was still the Accountant General of the state at the time he became candidate of his political party, the statement said the judgement of the Tribunal confirmed the fears of the Rivers APC about the possibility of getting justice.

The APC criticised what it called a “series of copy and paste rulings aimed at weakening the base of the party in Rivers State” and urged the judiciary not to endanger the democratic process of the country by issuing rulings that are not based in law.

The statement made it clear that neither the state chapter nor its candidate(s) were ever consulted on the topic of the withdrawal of the party’s petitions from the Election Petitions Tribunal, which Abdullahi Adams had led as party chairman.