The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday signalled its plans to launch a fresh bid to unseat President Muhammadu Buhari by approaching the Supreme Court to seek a review of its judgment validating the president’s election.
Also, they (PDP) will also ask the apex court to reconsider its judgments on governorship election disputes in Kano, Katsina, Kaduna and Osun States where the Supreme Court affirmed the victories of candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the elections.
APC, however, dismissed the PDP’s bid, describing the opposition party as a mockery of what an opposition party should be and a clog in the wheels of Nigeria’s political evolution.
PDP’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, along with the party, had challenged the declaration of Buhari as winner of the presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), citing irregularities and the president’s ineligibility because he had no secondary school certificate, among other grounds.
However, the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal dismissed PDP and Atiku’s petition and upheld Buhari’s victory; a judgment that the Supreme Court, which heard the appeal of the opposition party and its candidate affirmed.
National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, told reporters yesterday in Abuja that the party took the decision to seek a review of the Supreme Court judgments on the presidential election and the governorship elections in the four states in view of APC’s desperation to upturn the apex court decisions on Bayelsa and Zamfara States as well as to keep Imo State, which it believed the Supreme Court erroneously gave to the ruling party.
Ologbondiyan said the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) rose from a meeting yesterday and directed its lawyers to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its affirmation of Buhari as the duly elected president of Nigeria.
Addressing a press conference on the outcome of the PDP NWC meeting entitled, ‘Position of the PDP on the Desperation of the APC to Subjugate, Intimidate for the Purpose of Annexing the Supreme Court over Imo, Bayelsa and Zamfara Governorship Election Judgments,’ Ologbondiyan said: “The NWC of the PDP, after comprehensive consultations, states that our party has no choice left, given the manner with which the APC has conducted itself, than to ask for a review of the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, where the issue of certificate forgery and or presentation of false information in aid of qualifications was clearly established against the APC and her presidential candidate.”
He cited the reason for seeking the review of the Supreme Court judgment on the Katsina State governorship election petition on the fact that PDP lawyers also established similar issue of certificate forgery against the Governor, Hon. Bello Masari of APC.
“The PDP equally has no choice than to ask the Supreme Court to review the Kano, Kaduna and Katsina States’ election judgments because of manifest violence and substantial non-compliance with our electoral law,” he stated.
He said the party would be asking the Supreme Court to review its judgment on the Osun State governorship election in view of alleged manifest and disregard to the electoral rules in the conduct of the elections.
“Our party will not fold its hands and watch enemies of our hard-earned democracy, who contributed nothing to its birth, to continue to appropriate our collective sovereignty for their selfish political gains while destroying our institutions and holding our people to ransom,” the PDP added.
According to the party, the decision to seek for the reviews is because the APC is allegedly all out to destabilise the country and destroy democracy.