Ondo State Governor and chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Governors’ Forum, Dr Olusegun Mimiko has declared that leaders of the party will soon meet over the judgment of the Rivers state Election Petition Tribunal delivered on Saturday.
Mimiko, who spoke in Akure hinted that the PDP Governors were worried with the tribunal verdict and will also meet over the matter.
He described the tribunal judgment that nullified the election of Governor Nyensom Wike of Rivers State as an embarrassment that called for concern.
Mimiko said there were lots of issues surrounding the judgment, which called for deliberation.
The Governor, however, expressed optimism that the judgement would be upturned at the Appeal Court, describing it as unfair.
He said “Tribunal judgement is either way but the Rivers State Election tribunal judgement delivered last Saturday is embarrassing.
“We have challenged the jurisdiction of the tribunal sitting in Abuja when Port-Harcourt is peaceful. The Chairman of the tribunal was changed and the Supreme Court will deliver judgement on the jurisdiction case before the end of this week,” he stated.
Picking holes in the process that led to the last Saturday’s judgement, Mimiko queried the rationale behind the tribunal’s rush to deliver its judgement when it still had till next week before its sitting date would elapse.”
Maintaining that the judgment was hasty, Mimiko opined that the tribunal should have waited for the judgment of the Supreme court on its jurisdiction for sitting in Abuja instead of Port Harcourt.
He expressed optimism that the PDP will always win elections in Rivers State.
“The judgment will be appealed and we are confident of a positive outcome from the appellate Court. If election is to be conducted 100 times in Rivers State, PDP will win. Rivers State is PDP state”, he added.
The PDP Governors forum chairman said there was no way the tribunal judges could have studied the avalanche of written address and evidence adopted and delivered judgement in less than 24 hours.
According to him “Nine written addresses were adopted by the tribunal at about 2pm on Thursday while the notice of judgement was sent on Friday. Apart from the nine written addresses of over 40 pages each, there were over 100 witnesses and over 1000 documents presented. The judges could not have evaluated all these within 24 hours.”
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