Dr. Alex Otti, governor-elect of Abia State, has encouraged people of the state not to panic over his purported sack by a Federal High Court in Kano.
Otti noted that there is no cause for alarm over the kangaroo judgement.
Otti who spoke with the press in Abia, said arrangements for his swearing- in on May 29 were on full gear as planned, declaring that the antics of the enemies of democracy cannot truncate the will of Abians.
Reacting to the development, Festus Ogun, a human rights lawyer, noted that no court can nullify the candidacy of a person duly elected into office on the ground that he was not validly nominated.
He said, “No court can nullify the candidacy of a person duly elected on the ground that he was not validly nominated, after election. Once an election has been conducted, the issue of nomination pending in any court becomes academic and any order arising therefrom will be in vain.
“Should you fail to successfully challenge the nomination of a candidate before the conducted of election, it becomes “otilo”, otiose and academic after the conduct of the election. In fact, save for qualification issues, you cannot raise it at the Tribunal.
On Wednesday, the Labour Party had accused a “breakaway group” of the party led by acting National Chairman Lamidi Apapa of approaching a court in Kano State to seek the nullification of the party’s recent electoral victories.
The LP’s acting National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, who raised the alarm in a statement, said “The Labour Party has been informed of an illegal attempt by a breakaway group in the party led by Lamidi Apapa to misguide a Kano state High court to invalidate all the elections won by the Labour Party in the just concluded general election.”
The party spokesman alleged that “the suspended National Legal Adviser and a key member of the disgraced Apapa group, Samuel Akingbade Oyelekan, on Wednesday while the Presidential Appeal Tribunal was sitting in Abuja with all attentions focused on it, clandestinely sneaked out of Abuja to Kano state where he in collaboration with some members of the other political parties asked the court to invalidate all the elections won by the Labour Party, particularly, the national assembly in the 36 states and FCT on the ground that we didn’t submit register of voters to INEC.”
He added that Akingbade, who presented himself as representing the Labour Party, did not oppose the motion, thus forcing the helpless judge to reserve judgement for Thursday, (yesterday).
Ifoh went on to ask the judiciary and all law enforcement agencies, including the police and the Department of State Services, DSS, to note that Akingbade and loyalists of Apapa’s had ceased to represent the party.
(Vanguard)
