Yar’Adua shuns govs - Over election tribunals - He won’t intervene, says PDP

Idowu Samuel, Abuja - 11.02.2008

MEMBERS of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who have been mounting pressure on President Umaru Yar’Adua to intervene in the spate of unfavourable rulings by election tribunals have been meeting a brickwall, Nigerian Tribune can report.

Nigerian Tribune gathered in Abuja that President Yar’Adua has politely been shunning the PDP members’ requests. Fresh findings revealed that state governors and senators constitute the greatest number of PDP members who have been urging the President to assist them in mitigating the tension arising from judgments by the election petition tribunals across the country, none of which has been favourable to the party.

For instance, some members of the PDP from two states in the North-West were said to have approached President Yar’Adua recently and entreated him to intervene in the cases pending against their governors at the tribunals in the interest of the party.

The president was said to have promised the governors that he would look into their requests and said nothing more about it. Earlier, some federal legislators, according to the Nigerian Tribune sources, had approached former President Olusegun Obasanjo during a programme he attended in Abuja in January to speak to the President on the fallout from the tribunals at the state level, but Obasanjo reportedly told them to go to Yar’Adua and make their intentions known to him.

A top member of the PDP had told the Nigerian Tribune that some of those in the entourage of the President during his last visit to the United States had suggested to him that he should take action over the tribunals’ verdicts, but the president reportedly only said to them that he would look into their suggestions.

Since he assumed office in May 2007, the president has been harping on the principle of rule of law, transparency and constitutionalism and has kept to this. In his reaction, the acting National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Bernard Ezeh, said President Yar’Adua would never do anything to muzzle the judiciary on the cases before the tribunals

He said both the President and the PDP had long shown to Nigerians that the Federal Government had nothing to hide on the 2007 general election and hence, would not do anything to obstruct the course of justice.

Eze said anyone making attempts to pressurise the President was wasting his time, even as he said none of them understood the mindset of the President on his repeated advocacy of the rule of law.

Yar’Adua, said Ezeh, had demonstrated his commitment to the rule of law by ordering that the Speaker of the Kogi State House of Assembly should immediately be sworn in as the acting governor following the judgment of the Appeal Court which upheld that the tribunal which nullified the election of the governor, Alhaji Abubakar Idris.

The PDP scribe said the President has similarly demonstrated commitment to the rule of law when he asked the Chief Judge of Rivers State to swear-in Rotimi Amaechi after the Supreme Court gave judgment in his favour.

He said no PDP member should lose sleep over the tribunal judgments since, according to him, the party had all it took to win even if fresh elections were ordered by the tribunals in the cases involving the PDP.

He said, “the case of Kogi State was clear and simple. The tribunal did not say we rigged the election. All the tribunal said was that a candidate was excluded in the governorship election and then ordered a re-election believing that if exclusion had not taken place, the candidate of the party could have won.

“We are not afraid of running the election in Kogi as we are fully prepared. We are the only visible party in the state and we are happy that the tribunal did not say the we committed fraud in Kogi and other states where the elections were nullified.”