PDP Says Taraba’s Ruling Is A Plot To Decimate Opposition, Judicial Manipulation

Posted by African Examiner Latest Headlines, News, Politics Saturday, November 7th, 2015

By Ayo Balogun, Lagos

BALTIMORE, MD (AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has faulted the Saturday ruling of the Taraba Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which upturned the victory of Governor Darius Ishaku, alleging that it is another evidence of executive interference on the country’s judiciary.

Reacting hours after Justice Musa Ababakar’s led Tribunal panel the PDP in a statement issued Saturday by its National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, alleged 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 opposition stated that if the tribunal nullified the party’s primaries as basis for its decision, it then meant that no APC gubernatorial candidate could stand the test, as their party never had acceptable primaries in any of their States.

The party also recalled that it had earlier alerted the country and the international community of the grand design by the ruling 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 accused.

The party stated that it was totally confounded by the “brazen show of power by the executive and warned that the development clearly portends grave danger to the country’s democracy and indeed national cohesion and development”.

PDP therefore called on its members across the country, especially in Taraba state, to remain undaunted as the appellate courts would restore its well-deserved victory.