The election petition case against the three
senators from Kogi State came to the last
bus-stop last Wednesday. In a common case
of failure of the APC Senators to subject
themselves to party primaries before election,
two of the senators had their elections
nullified and their party barred from the
rerun, while Senator Dino Melaye smiled away
with the dismissal of the case against him.
THE Court of Appeal, Abuja Division was the
cynosure of many political stakeholders from
Kogi State last Wednesday, December 2,
2015. It was the day the court gave
judgment on all the three appeals on the
Senate contests in Kogi State
.
All three APC senators who were declared
winners of the election by the Independent
National Electoral Commission, INEC had
been dragged to the tribunal on the common
ground that the party did not conduct
primaries prior to the 2015 general elections
as against the grains of the law.
While the case against Senator Dino Melaye,
Kogi West was dismissed at the lower
tribunal, the duo of Mohammed Ohiare and
Abdulrahman Abubakar had suffered defeats
at the lower tribunal.
With the prevailing breeze of unease, the
December 2 judgments were expected to
decide the fate of all three embattled
Senators. The election that produced Sen.
Abdulrahman (Railway) of Kogi East was
finally nullified and another election was
ordered by the Appeal Court within 90 days.
Remarkably, APC was disqualified from
contesting the bye election as its candidate
ab initio was improperly nominated. The
same judgment was delivered between Sen.
Ohiare and Hon. Ogembe of the PDP.
Coming to Kogi West, the tides changed. The
breeze around the ocean suddenly turned hot
as Melaye was declared to have been the
winner of the Kogi West contest, a situation
that has puzzled political pundits and
judicial record keepers..
The decision of the Court of Appeal to nullify
the election of the two other senators elected
on the same basis has now raised focus on
the judgments.
The Dino escape is, however, not the only
one. It is on record that a number of House
of Assembly members who won elections on
the platform of the APC had their elections
nullified by the Election Tribunals in Lokoja.
Some of the APC legislators who scaled the
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Lokoja hurdles are currently facing the heat
at the Appellate Tribunal in Abuja over the
same issue.
