PDP blames Presidency as tribunal sacks Taraba Governor

The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday vehemently rejected the dismissal of Governor Darius Ishaku of Taraba State from office by the State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal.

It accused the presidency of manipulating the judiciary against it and claimed that the court’s decision was another proof of executive interference by the All Progressives Congress (APC) government in judicial matters.

It also said the p residency was all out to decimate the opposition.

Ishaku himself dismissed the tribunal’s verdict as totally unacceptable even as some residents of Jalingo openly celebrated after news of the development filtered in from Abuja where it was delivered.

The National Woman Leader of the APC Hajiya Ramatu Tijjani Aliyu hailed the ruling as victory for democracy.

The tribunal had proclaimed Hajia Aisha Jummai Alhassan, the APC candidate in the election, as winner.

It said Ishaku was not properly nominated by his party and therefore was not qualified to contest the election.

Ishaku is the third PDP governor after Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom and Nyesom Wike of Rivers to lose at election tribunal after the April elections.

The PDP had earlier blamed the federal government, the judiciary and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for its woes

Reacting to yesterday’s verdict, the PDP said the reason given by the tribunal for arriving at the bizarre decision was intriguing and only exposed what it dubbed contradictions and double standards inherent in most tribunal rulings against its interests as well as organized plan by government to deploy all unorthodox means to decimate the opposition.

“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,” PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh said in a statement.

He also faulted the premise on which the tribunal based its decision, saying: “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 argued that if the tribunal faulted PDP primaries, it then means that no APC gubernatorial candidate can stand the test because, according to him, the APC never had acceptable primaries in any of the states it won.

He said: “the PDP wants democracy watchers globally to recall that it had earlier alerted the nation and the international community to the grand design by the APC to use the judiciary to wrestle some PDP states, particularly Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Taraba states.