Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Former Deputy Senate President, has alleged that there is a plot to stop him from contesting for the Enugu state governorship race through the judiciary.
Ekweremadu, who levelled the allegation in a statement issued on Sunday by the Director-General of his campaign organization, Hon. Ogbo Asogwa, disclosed that a suit was filed at an Enugu State High Court against him over the governorship ambition.
The DG in the statement said that: “We have in our possession, court processes already filed at the Enugu State High Court, with the aim of using the Enugu State Judiciary to obtain an injunction barring the Senator from contesting the Enugu State gubernatorial election.
“In the suit marked E/254/2022 with Ekweremadu as the Respondent, the Applicant, Chief Oforma Mbannaji from Nike (For himself and on behalf of other members of Enugu East Senatorial District, Enugu State) wants the former Deputy President of the Senate stopped based on a zoning agreement supposedly reached at an expanded Caucus meeting of the Enugu State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on 7th July 2013).
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“The matter filed by the Applicant’s counsel, Dr. Peter Aneke, who also hails from Nike, will be heard by Justice Harold Eya on April 28, 2022.
“Sadly, this is yet another display of unmitigated and unconscionable desperation by a people hell-bent on ridiculing and desecrating virtually all critical institutions of democracy just to stop Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s aspiration and impose their lackeys and relations on the people of Enugu State.”
According to him, the attempt to also drag the judiciary into several other plots against his ambition “is the height of it and one that the Enugu State Judiciary, the Nigerian Judiciary, the National Judicial Council, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria must never allow to happen.
“We, therefore, call the attention of the Chief Judge of Enugu State, the National Judicial Council, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria to this latest effort to bring this revered arm of government to disrepute.
“More importantly, the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 expressly exclude the State High Courts from matters pertaining to State House of Assembly, governorship, National Assembly, and presidential elections.
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“So, this is evidently an evil, meretricious, and baseless plot to use the judiciary to abort the popular will of the people by manipulating the course of democracy to obtain from that revered arm of government what they cannot obtain in a free and fair contest.”