By Emmanuel Mogbede
Mr Adams Oshiomhole, All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, has described as injustice, the Supreme Court judgement, which upturned the party’s electoral victory in Zamfara on grounds of technicality.
He stated this while speaking with newsmen at the party’s national Secretariat in Abuja on Monday, in reaction to the development after the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) meeting.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the five-member panel of the Supreme Court justices, in a unanimous judgement on May 25, declared that the APC in Zamfara had no candidates in the 2019 general elections.
This, it explained was because the party failed to conduct recognised primaries in accordance with party rules.
In the lead judgment by Justice Paul Galinji, the apex court held that all votes cast for the APC during the general elections in Zamfara were “wasted votes”.
Oshiomhole declared that the Supreme Court ruling amounted to imposing total strangers on the people of Zamfara.
He added that the right thing the court should have done, is to call for a repeat of the elections if the party fell short of electoral laws.
He stressed that all political parties with the second highest votes in the elections and with the required spread, were elected to various elective positions in the state.
Oshiomhole, however, maintained that since it is impossible to appeal the Supreme Court ruling, the party will take its case the God.
On the votes cast for the APC at the elections which the court said were wasted votes, Oshiomhole recalled that at the time the votes were cast, a High Court had ruled that the party’s candidates were validly nominated.
“There is something I learnt from Lord Denning, a famous British Supreme Court Justice, that the law has to be interpreted taken into account the intention of the lawmakers, and try to deliver justice in its purest form.
“So, there is no justice when on grounds of technicalities, you impose on the people of Zamfara, not just a man or a woman, but a whole party candidates from Governor to Senate and others that they didn’t elect.
“If the court thought we were wrong, justice would have demanded that we repeat, but you can not use technicalities because we are in a democracy.
“There is nothing democratic when the court imposing strangers to govern a people, but we understand that after the Supreme Court, we can only take our case to the Court of God, to that extent we must obey the Court,”he said.
He further maintained that what the APC got in Zamfara was a judgement that didn’t translate to justice, considering the way the people of the state voted for the party and its candidates.
He, however, declined comments when asked whether the party would sanction its members that took it to Court in Zamfara.