Oshiomhole Finally Speaks on Zamfara: Says Supreme Court judgement undemocratic

ABUJA—National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, yesterday faulted Friday’s ruling of the Supreme Court which sacked all candidates elected on APC ‘s platform during the last general elections.

This came as the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, presented the Certificate of Return, CoR,  to the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Mohammed Mattawale, as governor-elect of Zamfara State.

Oshiomhole while fielding questions from journalists at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja after a meeting of the National Working Committee, NWC, of the party described the judgment as undemocratic.

“How can you ask me how I feel when the people of Zamfara voted for us in the manner they did and the courts said those votes were wasted?”, he fired back at journalists when asked to react to the judgment. Meanwhile at the time those votes were cast, the high court had ruled that our candidate was validly nominated.

“There is something I have learnt from Lord Denning, a famous British Supreme Court Justice, that the law has to be interpreted taking into account the intention of the lawmakers and try to deliver justice in its purest form.  There is no justice when on technicality you impose on people candidates they didn’t elect.

“If the court thought that we were wrong, the justice would have demanded a repeat. There is nothing democratic when you impose a stranger to govern the people. But we understand that after the Supreme Court you can only go to the court of God. To that extent we must obey the Supreme Court but what we got in Zamfara is a judgment that didn’t translate to justice,” he said.

Meanwhile, INEC, through its national commissioner  Amina Zakari, yesterday  at the  commissioner headquarters presented the CoR to the candidate of PDP Mohammed Mattawale, as governor-elect of Zamfara State.

The development came two days after INEC declared Mr Matawalle the governor-elect in line with a judgment of the Supreme Court on Friday.

The apex court voided the participation of the APC in the 2019 elections in the state. According to the apex court, the APC did not conduct valid primaries ahead of the polls.

At the formal presentation, the deputy governor-elect, Mahdi Gusau, three senators-elect and six members-elect of the House of Representatives from the state also received their certificates of return. They are all members of the PDP.

PDP candidates have also been declared winners of the majority of the seats in the Zamfara assembly elections. The state legislators-elect will, however, get their certificates at the Zamfara INEC office.

Mr Matawalle came second in the March 2 governorship election in the state, behind the candidate of the APC.

He polled 189,452 to emerge second in the governorship election. He has now been declared the winner based on the Supreme Court ruling which invalidated all APC votes.

Comments

comments