The Peoples Democratic Party , PDP, has said
Saturday’s judgment of the Taraba State
gubernatorial election tribunal in favour of the All
Progressives Congress , APC, candidate, Aisha
Alhassan, was another evidence of executive
interference in the judiciary.
The party said the reason given by the tribunal for
arriving at the “bizarre” decision is intriguing and
further exposes the contradictions and double
standards inherent in most tribunal rulings against
PDP interests recently.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, said in
a statement on Saturday that the “Taraba state
tribunal ruling again brings to the fore the organized
plan by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC
Federal Government to deploy all unorthodox means
to decimate the opposition”.
“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”, the party
stressed.
The PDP said if the tribunal was faulting the party’s
primaries as basis for its decision, it then means that
no APC gubernatorial candidate can stand the test, as
their party never had acceptable primaries in any of
their states.
The PDP said it had earlier alerted the nation and the
international community of the grand design by the
APC to use the judiciary to wrestle some PDP states,
particularly Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Taraba states.
“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”, it said.
PDP said it was totally confounded by the “brazen
show of power by the executive and warned that the
development clearly portends grave danger to our
democracy and indeed national cohesion and
development”.
The party called on its members across the country,
especially in Taraba state, to remain undaunted as
the appellate courts will restore its well-deserved
victory.