A chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Silas Onu has described Senator Obinna Ogba’s victory at the Appeal court as being without benefit.
Ogba on Thursday won the Appeal Court case between him and Ifeanyi Odii as the governorship candidate of the PDP in Ebonyi state.
But Onu in a statement argued that the court awarded no benefit to Ogba.
The statement reads, “Today, I went to the Court of Appeal for the judgment in an Appeal lodged by Sen. Obinna Joseph Ogba (the embattled governorship aspirants) and was genuinely concerned about the outcome. I was concerned because his people often bragged about controlling the outcome of Court of Appeal decision and somehow, it turns out to be the case. However, while he boast of owning the Court of Appeal, he forgets the ‘God factor’ in the affairs of men.
“Somehow, he always wins the appeal, but fails to reap any benefit therefrom. The first appeal, he had hoped that he will be declared as winner and even had a party two days before the judgment was read. He won, but was not declared. Instead, a retrial was ordered. Then, today, he as always, had bragged about how he will be declared the candidate by the Court of Appeal. However, God stepped in again and got the Court of appeal to dismiss the trial Court judgment without making any positive order for Obinna Ogba to benefit from. The Court granted him a victory without benefit.
” In its decision, the Court of Appeal held that there two primary elections for Governorship in Ebonyi state which held on the 29th May and 5th June, respectively. It went further to hold that where such is the case, the Court cannot select for the political party the primary election it prefers. Therefore, it is totally up to the political party to decide which of the primaries it want to rely on. You can see that no positive order was made to decide which of the two should be relied on.
“Now, with the decision of the Court of Appeal today, the decision is on the desk of PDP. The interesting part is that the party is out of time to pick and choose who it’s preferred candidate is. This is so as the time for substitution of candidates has closed and only a positive order directed at INEC can lead to the change of a name already submitted. At this juncture, Obinna Ogba is out of time to file any action to compel INEC for substitute the name submitted by the PDP (14 days don pass teh teh). In fact, as it stands today, AnyiChuks and discontinue his Appeal at the Supreme Court and abandon the ordered retrial and still remain as the candidate of PDP without any challenge”.
