PDP Govs Back Atiku’s Bid to Appeal to S’Court

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors have decided to team up with the party’s presidential candidate in the last general election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to get the Supreme Court to upturn the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), which rejected his petition to be declared winner of the election.

The tribunal last Wednesday had upheld the declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) as winners of the election.

Though Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, had earlier congratulated Buhari, stating that it was better to do so openly than to go to the State House and congratulate the president at night, the PDP Governors Forum, of which Wike is a member, yesterday encouraged Atiku and the PDP to appeal the judgment at the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, Atiku’s lawyers confirmed receipt of a copy of the judgment delivered by the tribunal, preparatory to their filing the appeal at the Supreme Court.

The PDP governors said in a statement that posterity would not be kind to them should they abandon the party and Atiku to fight the legal battle alone.

They said they arrived at their decision after studying the judgment and discovered several loopholes and anomalies in the verdict.

The statement added that PEPT has further put the judiciary on the spot and painted it in darker colours

In the statement from its secretariat in Abuja yesterday, the Chairman of the forum and Bayelsa State Governor, Hon. Henry Seriake Dickson, stated that the judgment stood justice on its head.

He added that if not challenged at the apex court, the judgment might constitute a clog in the wheel of developing democracy, aside sending wrong signals to the youths and laying a faulty moral foundation for generations of Nigerians yet unborn.

The statement said: “We would be doing a greater disservice and moral injustice to our party, our democracy and Nigerians in general if we turn blind eyes, swallow such bile and applaud that rape of justice.

“The judgment to say the least has further painted our judiciary with darker colours, only this time around with a never-before-seen blemished coat of tar.

“However, we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will rewrite that history by ensuring that such stains and tar are removed from our judicial archives.

“The apex court should know that its integrity is at stake and in order to avoid it been shredded to particles, must employ all known technicalities to save our nation and the future of Nigerians yet unborn from a development that may further make us a perpetual laughing stock among the comity of nations. Nigerians are very hopeful that these wrongs will be righted.

“Without any iota of trepidation, it is most paramount for us to once more restate and reconfirm our undiluted loyalty, deserving support and maximum commitment to our great party and the Atiku-Obi presidential ticket. This is our stand, now and in the future. Posterity would judge us harshly if we did otherwise”.