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Enugu 2023: Ikeoha Campaign Organization raises alarm over ploy to use Courts to stop Ekweremadu’s Guber ambition

The campaign organization of the former Deputy President of the Senate and Senator representing Enugu West Senatorial zone, Sen. Ike Ekweremadu, has raised alarm over what it described as a plot to use the instrumentality of the judicial process to stop Ekweremadu, who is a Guber candidate under the Peoples Democratic Party.

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In a press statement titled “Plot to use courts to stop Ekweremadu uncovered” which was sighted by our correspondent, the Director General of the campaign organization, Hon. Charles Ogbo Asogwa, alleged that the plot was a means by those he described as enemies of peace, democracy, and Enugu State to use the courts to stop the aspiration of Senator Ike Ekweremadu to the governorship seat of Enugu State.

Part of the press statement read “In the suit marked E/254/2022 with Ekweremadu as the Respondent, the Applicant, Chief Oforma Mbannaji from Nike (For himself and on behalf of other members of Enugu East Senatorial District, Enugu State) wants the former Deputy President of the Senate stopped based on a zoning agreement supposedly reached at an expanded Caucus meeting of the Enugu State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on 7th July 2013).

“The matter filed by the Applicant’s counsel, Dr. Peter Aneke, who also hails from Nike, will be heard by Justice Harold Eya on April 28, 2022.

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“Sadly, this is yet another display of unmitigated and unconscionable desperation by a people hell-bent on ridiculing and desecrating virtually all critical institutions of democracy just to stop Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s aspiration  and impose their lackeys and relations on the people of Enugu State.

“Their festival of lawlessness has seen the State House of Assembly, Local Government Council Chairmen, Town Unions, and lately the Enugu State Council of Traditional Rulers, and, in fact, almost every institution that our people hold in high reverence, needlessly dragged into and ridiculed by their reckless 2023 plots. Even institutions that have remained apolitical since ages have been both compelled and induced into issuing communiqués purportedly upholding an inexistent zoning arrangement, while those who resisted their plots have been threatened, detained in prison and or sanctioned.

“However, the current attempt to also drag the Enugu State and Nigerian judiciary into their plots is the height of it and one that the Enugu State Judiciary, the Nigerian Judiciary, the National Judicial Council, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria must never allow to happen”.

Calling the attention of the Chief Judge of Enugu State, the National Judicial Council, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria to the development, he argued that there wasn’t anything as Expanded Caucus in the PDP Constitution, and that the extant electoral laws didn’t confer jurisdiction over matters pertaining to State House of Assembly, governorship, National Assembly, and presidential elections, on state high courts.

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“For the avoidance of doubt, there is no such organ as an Expanded Caucus in the PDP Constitution and local government chairmen are not members of the State Caucus. Therefore, the purported meeting could not have been a Caucus meeting of our great party. In any case, it is not the business of the Caucus under the PDP Constitution to zone elective offices.

“More importantly, the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022  expressly exclude the State High Courts from matters pertaining to State House of Assembly, governorship, National Assembly, and presidential elections.

“So, this is evidently a meretricious, and baseless plot to use the judiciary to abort the popular will of the people by manipulating the course of democracy to obtain from that revered arm of government what they cannot obtain in a free and fair contest.

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“The Nigerian Judiciary should therefore watch the unfolding events in Enugu very closely, for democracy is gravely imperiled when the rule of law is reduced to the rule and unholy schemes of some men, who found themselves in power.

“Meanwhile, we wish to restate that no amount of intimidation, attacks, and detention of the supporters and political associates of Senator Ekweremadu or appointment and “election” of known deadly thugs and cultists into state and local government offices or nocturnal meetings and fetish practices or procured press conferences and publications or frivolous court processes can stop an idea which time has come.

“2023 is Ikeoha O’Clock (Ikeoha’s time) and nobody can stand in the way of God or the determination of the good people of Enugu State, who are eagerly yearning for a new Enugu State under the visionary leadership of Senator Ike Ekweremadu”, he said.

Since the jostle to occupy the Lion Building of Enugu State began, the PDP in the state has been facing differing contentions with regard to whether zoning should be upheld or jettisoned. The zone believed to be favored by the zoning arrangement, Enugu East Senatorial Zone, together with other zones, have insisted that the rotation be upheld, while another group believes that there’s no written zoning agreement, arguing that even if there were, the rotation should continue from another zone, since the cycle has been completed.