PALPABLE fears have gripped several state officials, as there are strong indications that tribunals sitting at various state capitals may overturn more governorship elections.
The ruling of the Supreme Court last Thursday in Abuja, which removed Celestine Omehia as governor and replaced him with Rotimi Amaechi, is said to have compounded the fears of some governors with similar problems.
The anxiety is reportedly having its toll on governance, as the governors and their aides merely put up bold faces, but most of the times abandon duties to plot ways out of the legal haze surrounding their elections.
States on the watch list are Adamawa, Yobe, Sokoto, Delta, Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo, Osun, Edo, Enugu and Ogun.
Even in Rivers, where Rotimi Amaechi last week won a gruelling legal fight to have his victory at the PDP primaries respected, the joys of his victory might be somehow muted, as he has to deal with an opposition challenge to the declared victory of the PDP at the polls.
In Adamawa State, Ibrahim Bapetel of the Action Congress is challenging the election of Murtala Nyako of the PDP on two grounds.
First, that he (Bapetel) was unlawfully excluded from the election by the INEC on the eve of the election. Two, that despite his exclusion, he still won the polls, and as such, he should be declared the winner of the election and sworn in as governor of the state.
Poll watchers hold that the first arm of Bapetel’s case could be likened to that of Prince Abubakar Audu of Kogi State, who was unlawfully excluded from the election and thus got a reprieve from the election tribunal.
But the second arm, of claiming to have won the election, is a constitutional matter, which might require interpretation by the Supreme Court.
In Yobe State, the election of Mamman Ali is threatened by alleged unlawful substitution of former ANPP candidate, Senator Usman Albashir, said to have led in the party primaries.
The morale of most top government officials in Damaturu, especially those of aides of the governor, is reportedly on low ebb, with the pace of government activities seemingly slowed down.
In Sokoto State, anxiety has gripped the populace, as the election tribunal delivers judgment tomorrow in the petition against the eligibility of Governor Aliyu Wammakko to contest the election.
The candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP), Alhaji Muhammadu Maigari, is questioning the governor’s alleged improper nomination by the PDP.
Wammakko had decamped from the ANPP and the PDP subsequently fielded him as its governorship candidate in place of former Minister, Muktar Shagari, who won the PDP primaries.
The DPP claims that Wammakko’s nomination, like that of his counterpart in Kebbi State, Alhaji Usman Dakingari, did not meet the timeframe as stipulated by the Electoral Act 2006.
It would be recalled that Dakingari’s election was annulled recently by the election tribunal because his nomination was filed out of time.
The DPP contended that as at the time the governor claimed to belong to the PDP, he still attended a meeting of the ANPP, as shown in the minutes of the meeting.
The party also revealed that Wammakko had filled, on the INEC form, both the ANPP and PDP as his sponsor for the governorship election.
Besides, the petitioners argued that the PDP had no deputy governorship candidate in the election. This is in breach of the 1999 Constitution.
In Delta State, the case of Mr. Peter Okocha against the election of Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan has gone on appeal.
The tribunal had dismissed the petition for lack of competence. Competence in the sense of Okocha lacking the locus to institute an action when he was allegedly not fielded by the Action Congress, as he claimed and having not contested the April 21 polls.
Likewise, in Ogun State, the tribunal technically knocked off the petition of the governorship candidate of the ANPP, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, thus confirming the election of Governor Gbenga Daniel.
The tribunal held that Amosun failed to disclose his age, qualification and nationality in his depositions, thus violating the provisions of the Electoral Act.
But while Daniel and his government savour the tribunal’s victory, Amosun is heading to the Appeal Court to challenge the reported over-reliance of the election tribunal in Abeokuta on technicalities, which the Supreme Court had clamped down on.
The governors of Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo, Osun, Edo, Enugu, Imo and Abia and a few other states face similar problems: alleged electoral irregularities and manipulation of results of the April 21 polls.
Aggrieved candidates of other political parties in these states – particularly the Action Congress, Labour Party (LP), ANPP and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) – have deposed to thousands of electoral documents and pieces of evidence of the manipulation of the elections by the PDP in collaboration with INEC officials and security agents.
These they want to prove at the tribunals and/or at the Appeal Court, as the case may be.
However, Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala has additional burden to discharge at the tribunal. This includes his alleged non-qualification for the election based on two legs:
That he was forced out of the Police Force on fraudulent acts; and that he was indicted by a judicial panel, set up by the administration of former Governor Rashidi Ladoja to probe his (Alao-Akala’s) former 11-month government after Ladoja was illegally impeached by the Oyo Assembly.
Rivers and Bayelsa are also being attacked at the tribunals by opposition parties, which alleged less voting and unimaginable high returns for the PDP candidates.
“Hence, it is not yet victory time for Rotimi Amaechi, who was installed on Thursday as governor of Rivers State,” an agitated opposition figure said last night in Lagos.
Oct282007