Relocation of Tribunals to Abuja

“There shall be established in each state of the federation one or more election tribunals, which shall to the exclusion of any Court or tribunal, have original jurisdiction to hear and determine petitions as to whether any person has been validly elected to the office of governor or deputy governor or as a member of any legislative House”.

--Section 285; Sub Section (2) of 1999 Constitution (As amended).

The recent controversial relocation of tribunals in Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Taraba States to Abuja did not come as a surprise to those who have been following the unfolding conspiracy against the old Eastern region since after the general elections that saw the two geo-political zones of South-East/ South-South remaining the stronghold of the now opposition party, PDP. The relocation of Taraba State Election Petition Tribunal together with Rivers and Akwa Ibom States’ tribunals was a ploy to deceive Nigerians and to conceal the ill-conceived intention to hijack Rivers and Akwa Ibom states by those behind these heinous machinations. Their aim is to thwart the will of the people of these states who defied the propagandist tendency of the APC to elect their leaders.

The relocation of these tribunals to Abuja by the President of Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa as a result of “security threats” in those states exposed the grand conspiracy of APC leaders who are hell-bent to capture Rivers and Akwa Ibom at all costs. The plot was hatched immediately after the results of governorship elections were announced by Professor Attahiru Jega-led INEC when the candidates for the APC in those states were roundly defeated by the PDP candidates in elections that were adjudged to be credible by international observers. It is very unfortunate and disheartening that the actors that are already acting out the script written by APC.

The flimsy excuse of security threats bandied by President of Court of Appeal to relocate these tribunals to Abuja cannot hold water; no reputable media house has carried any report or news as regards the alleged “security threats” in those states. In fact, the two states of Rivers and Akwa Ibom have been very peaceful since the inauguration of these administrations as a result of the triumph of peoples will via ballot papers. It is on record that Election Petition Tribunals are still sitting peacefully in the Boko Haram-ravaged states of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Kano, Gombe, Bauchi, etc.

The pertinent and thoughtprovoking questions racing through the minds of discerning Nigerians are: why will election petition tribunals continue to sit in those insurgent-infested states without any “security threats” but ceased to sit in peaceful states of Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Taraba as a result of “security threats”? What is the motivation of relocating tribunals handling election petition cases only in PDP-controlled states to Abuja even when verifiable evidence in those states contradicts the ill-informed decision? Is this part of the APC’s plot to strangulate the opposition, PDP ahead of 2019 elections by taking over oil-rich states of Rivers and Akwa Ibom?

Under the PDP-led Federal Government, opposition politics thrived as a result of the later tolerance for tenets of democracy— which saw the then opposition parties winning governorship elections under PDP-controlled states; but it appears that the APC want to turn Nigeria into one-party nation, taking into consideration the body language of its leadership, where they are doing everything humanly possible to hijack Rivers and Akwa Ibom States via tribunals. This crowd of conspiracy started building up immediately after the general elections, when the APC-controlled media outfits unleashed it hordes of media machineries on South-East/ South-South zones with sole objective to discredit the elections held in these regions. The Lagos media axis started churning out fictitious stories as editorials, articles and news reports in other to rubbish the credibility of elections conducted in these two regions as preparatory grounds to use tribunals to thwart the will of the people. These media houses have not deemed it fit to investigate the mysterious death of former Kano State Resident Electoral Commission, Mr. Mikhail Abdullahi and his family who were killed by “mystery” fire two days after Kano State gave the then APC Presidential candidate, General Buhari almost two million votes without single cancellation of votes in a state where majority of its voters are illiterates. It is yet to be refuted that thousands of underage voters took part in contributing to the alleged huge number of votes in Kano that enabled President Buhari to emerge the winner of the widely celebrated “free and fair” election.

With all these weighty evidence of electoral fraud in Kano and other Northern states, the hypocritical elements have failed to see any wrong doing in elections held in those places. APC should bear in mind that Nigeria is experiencing a graveyard peace now; any illconceived actions to truncate the will of the people in South-East/ South-South will be resisted.

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