By Phineas Padio
Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, says the commission will obey the court order, stopping the supplementary Governorship election slated for Saturday.
Justice Abdulaziz Waziri of State High Court 4 gave the order following a motion ex parte filed by Movement of Restoration for Defence of Democracy, MRPD, claiming that its party’s logo was excluded from the ballot Paper for the March 9th Governorship election conducted in the state.
At a press briefing in Yola, Kassim Gaidam, Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of INEC said as a law-abiding organization the commission had received and will comply with the court order.
“There’s a court order, we’re going to obey the order as it is”. Gaidam, however, said the commission had dispatched a team of lawyers from Abuja and will appear before the court to argue against the order. “I want to confirm to you that today, indeed a court order was served on the commission’s headquarters; and the commission in its usual very good tradition of compliance with court orders has sent appropriate notices, filed counter motions and counter originating sermon.
“The commission will be represented by a team headed by a Senior Advocate before the High Court here in Yola tomorrow. And we would be waiting to hear the outcome or the decision the court will take tomorrow”.
After the first round of election on March 9, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Hamadu Fintiri, established a lead margin of 32,476 votes over the All Progressives Congress candidate, Jibrilla Bindow, who is seeking a second term in office.
Ahmed Fintiri had polled 367,471 votes, while governor Bindow scored 334,995 votes.
In declaring the election inconclusive, INEC said the margin was lower than 40,998 votes that were declared.
Few days after INEC declared that it was going to conduct a supplementary election in the state, the PDP raised the alarm and accused Governor Jibrilla Bindow of planning to use the MRPD to scuttle the supplementary election through unnecessary legal bottlenecks.
“It has come to our attention the desperate moves by the leadership of Adamawa state government to upturn the mandate of the people,” it said.
“One of the alleged moves is to lobby the presidency to cause the State High Court to slam INEC with an order of injunction restraining the electoral body from conducting the supplementary election and cancel the entire elections.
“They intend to use a governorship Candidate who allegedly claimed that the logo of his party was omitted on the ballot in the last governorship election to file a case before the state High Court.” It had said.
