Imo: We’re confident S’Court’ll reverse itself – Secondus

TRACKING>>National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus has expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would reverse the January 14th judgement that sacked Emeka Ihedioha as governor of Imo State.

Secondus in an interview yesterday said it was wrong for Governor Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to claim that the PDP’s appeal for the review was statute barred.

Uzodinma’s counsel, Damian Dodo (SAN) had said in Abuja on Sunday that the Supreme Court no longer had powers to hear the application for the review of the 14th January, 2020 judgment which sacked Ihedioha, arguing that it was statue barred.

However, the PDP National Chairman said the party was returning to the court to seek justice.

According to him, Uzodinma and APC allegedly misled the Supreme Court into believing that 213, 495 votes were unlawfully excluded from the votes they scored in the governorship election held on 9th March, 2019.

He maintained that if such was allowed to stand, the total number of votes cast at the election would be more than the total number of votes accredited for the election.

Secondus stated that the number of voters accredited for the election was 823,743 while the total valid votes cast was 731,485.

Secondus said: “We are not going to court for the sake of going there. Our returning to court is based on justice. It has nothing to do with any technicality or otherwise.

“We want the court to know that it was deceived to grant such a relief which was fraudulently obtained by those who asked that our governor be sacked.

“The justices of the Supreme Court are human beings. They could be misled and they were misled.

“The judgment that removed Ihedioha was fraudulently obtained as could be seen in the papers filed by our candidate at the Supreme Court.

“We do not need to set a bad precedence.

‘‘Therefore, the inclusion of 213,695 votes for both the APC and Uzodinma would make the number of votes cast to be more than the number of accredited number of votes for the election.”

The seven-man panel of the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad, had upheld an appeal filed by Uzodinma that the votes polled in 388 out of the 3,523 polling units were excluded in the final results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission.