Tight security scares voters from polling centres

Idowu Samuel, Niyi Adebimpe, Johnson Babajide andAyodele Adesanmi - 30.03.2008

The camp of a former South East governor and that of a sitting Senator from the zone are currently at loggerheads over allegations of a N250 million said to have been packaged by the ex-governor to ensure the Senator loses his seat at the Appeal Tribunal set to adjudicate over his case.

Sources in the South East informed Sunday Tribune that the Senator’s camp has fingered the former governor who parted ways with the Senator mid last year as being the brain behind an unfolding plot involving an attempt to raise a bribe of N250 million to influence the ruling of the Appeal Court so as to throw the Senator out of the National Assembly.

The Senator’s election was last year nullified by the Election Petition Tribunal, and the battle had shifted to the Appeal Court. But ahead of the determination of the Election by the Appeal Tribunal, the governor’s men are said to be moving to ensure that the ruling affirmed the nullification of the election and were said to have promised a whopping N250 million to ensure that.

The former governor is believed to have mobilised a tidy sum of N250 million to allegedly influence the judges to specifically rule against the serving Senator who currently chairs a Senate Committee.

The governor’s grouse, it was learnt, was that the Senator and other politicians in concert with his successor, teamed up to work against his interests and that of the political structure in the state.

It was learnt that a group, including a former Secretary to the State Government, some advisers to the governor and a former National Secretary of the PDP, were working on the agenda to unseat the Senator.

But some sources also said that the quarrel between the former governor and the Senator dated back to some years ago and that the ex-governor was bent on taking his pound of flesh when it appeared the Senator can have his back to the wall through the tribunal case.

Contacts were said to have been made with a judge who is to link up with others in the system but the attempt was said to have hit a brick wall.