The media team of Abia State Governor-Elect, Dr Alex Otti has urged the public to ignore the news making rounds that Justice Muhammad Nasir-Yunusa of the Kano Division of the Federal High Court on Friday nullified the victory of Otti in the March 2023 election.
Ferdinand Ekeoma, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Abia Governor-Elect denied nullifying the candidature of Otti, stressing that the report is sponsored and widely circulated by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Abia state government.
Ekeoma said that PDP alleging that a Kano High Court has sacked Otti is baseless, unfounded and misleading, and thus should be ignored.
According to him, although the perpetrators targeted Otti and the people of Abia for that legal coup, they were not courageous enough to confront him in the open, hence he was never joined as a party for fear that his eminently qualified lawyers would take the perpetrators to the cleaners.
Ekeoma reassured Otti’s teeming supporters and millions of Abians who are still celebrating the liberation of Abia, that the Federal High Court in Kano did not issue any order on Otti because, unlike those who brought the suit to steal the Abia peoples’ mandate, the court was conscious of its powers and careful not to fall into the booby trap set for it by the PDP and Abia state government.
“To that effect, the court specifically stated in Clause 9 of the judgment “The candidates that participated in the election in Abia state are not parties before this court and as such the court lacks the jurisdiction to make an order for the issuance of Certificate of Return to them.
“The Federal High Court in Abia had entertained similar cases as Pre-election matters involving some PDP candidates vsLP Candidates, and the matters were adjudicated up to the Supreme Court. In all the cases, Labour Party won at the Federal High Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court respectively.
“The case brought by the petitioners is a pre-election matter and under Section 285(14)(a) of the Electoral Act, the petitioners have no locus standi as they were not aspirants in LP.”
Ekeoma said that Section 285 (9), requires that it must be filed within 14 days of the occurrence of the event which in other words, means that the suit should have been filed before the end of June last year.
He said that on the contrary, the suit was filed on May 11, 2023, and a week later, the Judge delivered judgement.
Ekeoma said that the Federal High Court in Kano does not have jurisdiction over Abia State, therefore it is impossible for any decision emanating from the court to affect Otti who was not a party to the suit in Kano.
“It, therefore, exposes PDP’S gullibility to have expected the court to make an order against Dr Otti, an action that would have incurred the wrath of the NJC,” he said.
Ekeoma assured Abia people and Nigerians in general that the mandate given to Otti by the long-suffering Abia masses is safe and secure and can never be stolen by strange usurpers who are pained and frightened by the reality of their imminent exit from power in the next few days.
He said, “In the next few days, Dr Alex Otti will be sworn in as governor to enable him to commence the process of rebuilding and recovering our state that was destroyed and plundered by the PDP, so Abians are enjoined to ignore the Fake Report claiming that he has been sacked by a High Court in Kano.”
