Ukandi Odey, Jos
The Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Plateau State chapter, Hon Chris Hassan, has disclosed that he has written to the National Judicial Council of Nigeria to seek a review of the of the Judgements of the Appeal Court in respect of appeals arising from the verdicts of the elections petitions that sat in Plateau State.
Saying that he could not have afforded not to take such a step, Hassan insisted that the Peoples Democratic Party has the best and most entrenched ‘structures’ of all the political parties in Nigeria, and the court and the justices were misled into taking the wrong decisions and arrive at verdicts that did not truly bear justice.
Hassan noted that the PDP in Plateau complied with the Justice Gang court order that invalidated the state congresses of 2020. He said in compliance with the Justice Gang Court order, the Plateau State PDP held a fresh congress on September 25, 2021, after which the major contender for the Party chairmanship who was the petitioner in the suit that won the 2020 Justice Gang Court order for fresh congress, Bitrus Kaze, accepted the outcome and congratulated the winners.
Hassan narrated that thence forth, not even Kaze or any other member of the Party has gone to Court to challenge, in part or whole, the conduct and outcome of that congress, and to that extent, there is no court order burdening that congress. He therefore wondered how the Appeal Court relied on a non-existing court order to cite and plead “disobedience” of Court order and give a verdict that is actually standing on nothing.
Hassan said it also became necessary to petition the NJC because Plateau State was singled out for peculiar treatment as the judiciary curiously adopted a dedicated panel to handle all the thirty seven (37) cases related to Plateau, while it was flexible in the manner it assigned the cases from other states to various panels simultaneously.
The Appeal Court dedicated panel, relying of the contentious claim of “no structure”, upturned the victories of all the PDP National Assembly members, State House of Assembly members, and even invoked the same ground to invalidate the election of Governor Mutfwang which is now before the Supreme Court for superior advocacy and adjudication.
