The Peoples Democratic Party has said Saturday’s judgment of the Taraba State Governorship Election Tribunal in favour of the All Progressives Congress candidate, Hajia Aisha Alhassan, was another evidence of executive interference in the judiciary.
The party said the reason given by the tribunal for arriving at the decision was intriguing and further exposed the contradictions and double standards inherent in most tribunal rulings against PDP interests recently.
National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, in a statement on Saturday in Abuja, said the tribunal’s ruling again brought to the fore the alleged organised plan by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC Federal Government to deploy all unorthodox means to decimate the opposition.
He said, “It is rather curious and a great conflict of irony that the Taraba tribunal sitting in Abuja on security grounds faulted the conduct of PDP primaries shifted to the same Abuja on security reasons.”
He said if the tribunal was faulting the party primaries as basis for its decision, it then means that no APC governorship candidate can stand the test, as their party never had acceptable primaries in any of their states.
Metuh called on democracy watchers globally to recall that the PDP had earlier alerted the nation and the international community of either grand design by the APC to use the judiciary to wrestle some PDP states, particularly Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Taraba states.
He said, “Evidence that Taraba ruling was a product of Presidency manipulation
can be deduced from the fact that few hours before the judgment was delivered, the APC had arrogantly announced their victory on the new media.”
He said the PDP was totally confounded by the brazing show of power by the executive and warned that the development clearly portends grave danger to our democracy and indeed national cohesion and development.
He called on members of the PDP across the country, especially in Taraba State, to remain undaunted as the appellate courts will restore its well-deserved victory.
