Imo: Ihedioha was never meant to have been declared governor – Oshiomhole

By Bolaji Ogundele, Abuja

 

The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has said Hon. Emeka Ihedioha was not supposed to have been declared governor of Imo State from the onset.

The Chairman of the ruling party also placed the blame for the initial confusion and questions that trailed the Supreme Court judgement on the Imo State governorship election on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for flouting the provisions of the constitution.

Comrade Oshiomhole stated these on Friday while addressing the State House Press Corps after presenting the Imo State governor, Senator Hope Uzodinma, to President Muhammadu Buhari for the first time as a governor on the platform of the ruling party.

According to the party Chairman, besides the fact that the INEC chose to exclude a huge number of validly cast votes in its final collation of the Imo State governorship election, the ground on which the Supreme Court eventually based its final decision, the decision of the electoral umpire to declare the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate, Ihedioha, who failed to meet the constitutional condition of meeting a quarter of votes cast in two-thirds of the council areas of the state was a violation of the constitution.

“I think there’s something the media has strictly refused to focus on and with respect;  I think that a lot of the views that people parade are derived from what I call the electronic media lawyers.

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“Is here any of us in this room, who is not aware that at the time Emeka Ihedioha was declared, even the returning officer could not show that he scored the constitutional requirement of at least one quarter of the total votes cast, in at least two-thirds of the local government areas?

“On that criterion alone, there is no question that in the eyes of the law, Emeka Ihedioha ought not to have been declared because he had those numbers only in nine local government areas and of course you know the state has about 27 local government areas. So as journalists, is nine a two-third of 27?

“INEC completely and irresponsibly misbehaved by using a professor who seemed to be so senile that he didn’t know that nine is not two-thirds and. This is very serious and because they take advantage of the fact that once the INEC makes a pronouncement, even if the pronouncement is made by a lunatic in INEC, you can’t reverse it, you’ll have to go to court and this fits into PDP’s fixation; they’ll always say go to court

“They just feel that it is their birthright to continue to rig elections. So the next time you see them talking, ask them how many local government areas did PDP score one-quarter of the votes in the total votes cast in how many local government areas?

“That is not in the provision of the Electoral Act, that is the express provision of the Nigerian constitution. I think all of you should read the Nigerian constitution and ask INEC to give you the results of Imo, even their own version, even excluding that of Governor Hope Uzodinma, you will find that Emeka Ihedioha ought not to have been declared.

“For me, it shows that nobody is interrogating INEC and that is why they are getting away with blue murder. And this is minus the fact that INEC has not explained why they did not collate votes that were certified and signed by the presiding officers, appointed by INEC in each of the 388 polling units. If there is something wrong with those votes, INEC is on record to having had course to cancelled unit votes where they are dissatisfied. Those votes were not cancelled, they just chose to ignore them”, he said.

Speaking further, the party leader noted that the opposition PDP had received too much underserved connivance from some state institutions, so much that the party had assumed that some of its alleged wrong patterns, when challenged, it resorts to attacking the state and its institutions.

He cited the example of the recent public protests organised by the PDP to lament its loss in Imo State, noting that although the case in Imo was one of righting a wrong done, there had been several cases where the ruling APC had suffered real injustices, meted out to it by the Judiciary and the INEC, but for which it never considered pulling down the state and its apparatuses.