Ekweremadu Raises Alarm Using The Court To Scuttle His Huber Bid

By Cosmas Chukwu

The anxiety and furore generated by the declared ambition of former ECOWAS Parliament Speaker and immediate Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate, Ike Ekweremadu to vie for the governorship seat of Enugu state are far from abating but rather has taken a new dimension.
Before his declaration, several rallies had been held to preempt his ambition across the three senatorial zones on the premise that he would be running against a reported zoning arrangement , if he eventually decided to run.
This development created the assumption that the fear of the looming image of the fifth term senator representing Enugu West was indeed the beginning of political wisdom and activism in Enugu state.
Ekweremadu defiantly insists that there is nothing like zoning in the state as previous elections had been an unbridled all-comers affair across the contesting parties.
He argued further that his Greater Awgu bloc of Awgu,Aninri and Oji River LGAs of Enugu West senatorial zone is the only one of four old Divisions representing four sub ethnic zones yet to produce a governor in the state.
Recently, some persons from Enugu East Senatorial zone are alleged to have approached Court to further their efforts at stopping Ekweremadu’s ambition.
In a statement signed and issued by Hon Ogboo Asogwa,the Director General of the Ekweremadu Campaign Organization,the group expressed serious concerns about the development.
“It has come to our knowledge the plots by enemies of peace, democracy, and Enugu State to use the courts to stop the aspiration of Senator Ike Ekweremadu to the governorship seat of Enugu State.

“We have in our possession, court processes ,herewith attached, already filed at the Enugu State High Court, with the aim of using the Enugu State Judiciary to obtain an injunction barring the Senator from contesting the Enugu State gubernatorial election.

“In the suit marked E/254/2022 with Ekweremadu as the Respondent, the Applicant, Chief Oforma Mbannaji from Nike, for himself and on behalf of other members of Enugu East Senatorial District, Enugu State, wants the former Deputy President of the Senate stopped based on a zoning agreement supposedly reached at an expanded Caucus meeting of the Enugu State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, on 7th July 2013).

“The matter filed by the Applicant’s counsel, Dr. Peter Aneke, who also hails from Nike, will be heard by Justice Harold Eya on April 28, 2022.”

“However,the group expressed regrets, “Sadly, this is yet another display of unmitigated and unconscionable desperation by a people hell-bent on ridiculing and desecrating virtually all critical institutions of democracy just to stop Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s aspiration and impose their lackeys and relations on the people of Enugu State.

“Their festival of lawlessness has seen the State House of Assembly, Local Government Council Chairmen, Town Unions, and lately the Enugu State Council of Traditional Rulers, and, in fact, almost every institution that our people hold in high reverence, needlessly dragged into and ridiculed by their reckless 2023 plots. Even institutions that have remained apolitical since ages have been both compelled and induced into issuing communiqués purportedly upholding an inexistent zoning arrangement, while those who resisted their plots have been threatened, detained in prison and or sanctioned.

“However, the current attempt to also drag the Enugu State and Nigerian judiciary into their plots is the height of it and one that the Enugu State Judiciary, the Nigerian Judiciary, the National Judicial Council, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria must never allow to happen.”

“We therefore call the attention of the Chief Judge of Enugu State, the National Judicial Council, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria to this latest effort to bring this revered arm of government to disrepute.

“For the avoidance of doubt, there is no such organ as an Expanded Caucus in the PDP Constitution and local government chairmen are not members of the State Caucus. Therefore, the purported meeting could not have been a Caucus meeting of our great party. In any case, it is not the business of the Caucus under the PDP Constitution to zone elective offices”, the Ekweremadu camp stated.

Going forward,Hon Asogwa asserted that “More importantly, the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 expressly exclude the State High Courts from matters pertaining to State House of Assembly, governorship, National Assembly, and presidential elections.

“So, this is evidently an evil, meretricious, and baseless plot to use the judiciary to abort the popular will of the people by manipulating the course of democracy to obtain from that revered arm of government what they cannot obtain in a free and fair contest.”

The Nigerian Judiciary should therefore watch the unfolding events in Enugu very closely, for democracy is gravely imperiled when the rule of law is reduced to the rule and unholy schemes of some men, who found themselves in power.

“Meanwhile, we wish to restate that no amount of intimidation, attacks, and detention of the supporters and political associates of Senator Ekweremadu or appointment and “election” of known deadly thugs and cultists into state and local government offices or nocturnal meetings and fetish practices or procured press conferences and publications or frivolous court processes can stop an idea which time has come.

“2023 is Ikeoha O’Clock, Ikeoha’s time,and nobody can stand in the way of God or the determination of the good people of Enugu State, who are eagerly yearning for a new Enugu State under the visionary leadership of Senator Ike Ekweremadu.”, the Campaign Organization declared.