GOVERNORSHIP POLLS: Delta will surely get a rerun — Emerhor

In this interaction with Vanguard in Warri, the first since the Delta State Governorship election tribunal upheld the election of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, the Delta State All Progressives Congress (APC) Governorship Candidate in the 2015 polls, Olorogun O’tega Emerhor says he still sets his eyes on a rerun election. By Egufe Yafugborhi Whatis your reaction to the Election tribunal judgement that threw away your petition? My party, the APC, has, through the state chairman, issued a detailed reaction to the judgement. As the candidate, I join my party to disagree with the judgement. I feel the tribunal erred in many areas and didn’t do justice to our case. You know this is the first level of a three step judicial process that could take both parties to the Supreme Court. What are your grounds for the appeal? Our solicitors have instructions to appeal the judgement. They have received a certified true copy of the ruling and already working on the grounds for appeal. They would be more authoritative in spelling it out, but I can give you a few indications here: First, we believe the tribunal erred when, after holding that INEC has powers to issue guidelines including the use of card readers, nonetheless, failed to find that Okowa/PDP/INEC breached those guidelines through their admitted resort to manual voters accreditation. Second, we believe the tribunal erred when it ruled a duly certified INEC generated card readers accreditation report showing total voters accreditation at 715,392 as inconclusive based on unsubstantiated oral evidence. Third, the tribunal erred when it expunged our star witness, Ore Ohimor’s analysis, earlier admitted as exhibit, on the premise that it was only front loaded during reply by the petitioners to the respondents’ reply. That analysis was core to our case of over accreditation/voting. It showed over voting in 1,847 (61 per cent) of polling units in Delta. We believe, based on this alone, the elections ought to have been cancelled. Fourth, we believe the tribunal erred when it applied the recent case of BALOGUN Vs AKPATASON (August 2015 ) to dismiss our case on the basis that it was signed by only one of the two petitioners, ignoring the subsisting legal authority at the time the case was instituted, i.e. IBRAHIM Vs SHERIFF (2002 ) that allowed one signatory. We believe the petitioners couldn’t and were not expected to anticipate the recent BALOGUN Vs AKPATASON ruling. Many grounds of appeal These, among others, I believe, will form the many grounds of our appeal. You appear so sure of winning an appeal. Assuming a rerun is ordered, APC at the national level is said not to be in support of your candidature, that you are not popular enough to win Delta State. It is being said that they supported and got Rivers and Akwa Ibom elections cancelled but didn’t support cancelling that of Delta. Is this the correct position? Emerhor You have raised two issues. First, I’m not aware that APC as a party and government are the ones directing tribunal judges on which elections to cancel or not. The APC and PDP have won and lost a number of tribunal cases across the country. APC lost Gombe’s judgement even before losing in Delta. Akwa Ibom was only partially won. Rivers is the only clear win by APC so far. This trend cannot be interpreted to mean APC is directing judges which states to deliver to it. Your inference of APC’s direct intervention is highly untrue and I can only say it falls into the narrative that the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, has been pushing to falsely smear our great party. Secondly, it is the PDP in Delta state that stands to gain from peddling the notion that I’m not popular enough to win Delta State or that my national party leaders are not in my support. They are only pushing this out of fear for a possible rerun. I’m the candidate of the party. The party supported me during the April 11, 2015 elections and have been supporting me since then. It is the PDP that did not allow an election in Delta State that would have established who was more popular. They resorted to rigging and allocation of votes. They are the unpopular party waiting for embarrassing rejection by Deltans. Their strategy, therefore, is to sow doubt in the minds of Deltans who now know that the federal might is now with APC. This is rerun politics already at play and Deltans must be wary. With the spate of defections from PDP to APC already intense in Delta, PDP is obviously acting out of fear. Read more on VANGUARD