The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has reacted to Saturday’s judgment of the Taraba state gubernatorial election tribunal in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Aisha Jummai Alhassan, saying “it is another evidence of executive interference in the judiciary”.
The party said the reason given by the tribunal for arriving at the bizarre decision is intriguing and further exposes the contradictions and double standards inherent in most tribunal rulings against PDP interests recently.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh said in a statement on Saturday that 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 PDP said if the tribunal is faulting the party primaries as basis for its decision, it then means that no APC gubernatorial candidate can stand the test, as their party never had acceptable primaries in any of their states.
The PDP wants democracy watchers globally to recall that it had earlier alerted the nation and the international community of the grand design by the 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 said.
PDP said it is totally confounded by the brazing show of power by the executive and warned that the development clearly portends grave danger to our democracy and indeed national cohesion and development.
Finally the party calls on its members across the country, especially in Taraba state to remain undaunted as the appellate courts will restore its well-deserved victory.
