Taraba tribunal judgment, evidence of executive interference – PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party , PDP, has reacted to Saturday’s ruling of the Taraba State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal that nullified the election of Governor Darius Ishaku and declaring the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Aisha Alhassan, as the bonafide winner of the April 11 election, describung it as another evidence of executive interference in the judiciary.

According to the party, the reason given by the tribunal for arriving at the “bizarre” decision is intriguing and has further exposed the contradictions and double standards inherent in most tribunal rulings against PDP interests recently.

In a statement issued by the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, the party said the “Taraba State tribunal ruling again brings to the fore the organized plan by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC Federal Government to deploy all unorthodox means to decimate the opposition.

“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”.

According to the PDP, if the tribunal faulted the party’s primaries as basis for its decision, it then means that no APC gubernatorial candidate can stand the test, as their party never had acceptable primaries in any of their states.

The party said it had earlier alerted the nation and the international community of the plot by the APC to use the judiciary to wrestle some PDP states, particularly Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Taraba states.

“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”.

The PDP stated that it was totally confounded by the “brazen show of power by the executive and warned that the development clearly portends grave danger to our democracy and indeed national cohesion and development”, just as it called on its members across the country, especially in Taraba state, to remain undaunted as the appellate courts will restore its well-deserved victory.

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