The APC in a statement says it considered the reason for the dismissal of the petition of its governorship candidate, as hypothetical and inconsistent with the position of the Supreme Court which had on the 14th of November 2003 in the case of Buhari and two others against Obasanjo and Others.
According to the statement signed by the Publicity Secretary, Darlington Nwauju, the APC said the Supreme mentioned that a Candidate in an election cannot be one and the same person with the political party that sponsored him, and that the law gives them independent and distinct personality and rights.
The statement insisted that candidates can file election petition together in their individual capacities and that the law does not make them one and the same for the purposes of the petition, emphasizing that it 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 an election petition.
The statement said the APC as a party makes haste to say that the three-man panel headed by Justice 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.
Nwauju claimed that the judgement of the Tribunal delivered on the 2nd October 2023 amounts to a mockery of the judiciary as a lower court disdainly trashed the position of the highest Court in the land as it is common knowledge that whatever the position of the Supreme Court is on a matter, becomes law.
The statement insisted that the judgment of the 2nd of October, 2023 confirmed the fears of Rivers APC about getting justice in the face of iron cast evidences presented by the legal team at the Tribunal which includes the fact that the PDP Governorship candidate was as at the time he became candidate of his political party, still a serving Accountant General of Rivers State.
The Rivers APC maintained that the judgment goes without saying that the preponderance of arguments and evidences the party legal team marshalled out in the other petitions involving the National Assembly and House of Assembly candidates, were equally dismissed by brother judges who presided over the other Tribunals hearing the cases.
The APC however, condemned what they described as series of copy and paste rulings aimed at weakening the base of the party in Rivers State and called on the judiciary in the country not to jeopardize the democratic process by delivering rulings that have no foundation in law.
Nwauju said not challenging and dismantling these hypothetical rulings against the candidates amounts to disservice to the memories of hundreds of members lost to the orgy of violence that trailed political activities in Rivers State.
The statement clarified that at no time did the National Working Committee of the party under Abdullahi Adamu meet to discuss or ratify the withdrawal of the petitions from the Election Petitions Tribunal, as neither the State Chapter nor its candidates were ever consulted on the vexatious topic.
