A key member of the Ejike Oguebego-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra State, Chief Chris Uba, has warned his brother, Senator Andy Uba, and former Minister of Aviation, Senator Stella Oduah and others to stop deceiving the public by parading themselves as senators .
Chris Uba, who described himself as “Senator representing Anambra South” while speaking with journalists in Abuja on Sunday, said he was shocked that those who should be conversant with the laws of the land could be deceiving the public regarding their true status after the Supreme Court failed to recognise the dubious way through which they got to the Senate.
The Supreme Court had on Friday set aside the verdict of the Court of Appeal in Ajuja over the exco leadership and affirmed the judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja which recognised the Oguebego exco as the state’s authentic leadership.
Chris Uba further argued that since the apex court had ruled in thier favour, the affected ‘former’ senators and House of Representatives members should accept their fate and honourably step down.
He said he would be leading other members of the party who emerged as candidates under the Oguebego monitored primaries to the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) today to demand for their certificates of return.
But Andy Uba and Oduah had faulted the assumptions that the Supreme Court judgment effectively removed them from office, insisting that they were not party in the suit which basically had to deal with issues of leadership crisis in Anambra PDP.
Chris Uba further told journalists that : “The time for substitution had passed and we were busy doing our campaigns when, one week to the election, the Andy Uba faction went to the Court of Appeal and set aside the judgement of the High Court. Based on that, they took the judgement to INEC and their names were used to substitute our own. We cried foul then, insisting we were not party to the suit but INEC insisted that our names were initially published based on an earlier court order and that we should go on appeal.
“We appealed to the Supreme Court and the verdict on Friday clearly vindicated our position as the Supreme Court set aside that judgement of the Court of Appeal, agreed with the judgement of the High Court and even granted all our five prayers.
“Now, they (Chris Uba and Oduah) went on the air and issued press statements to deceive the public that the order from the Supreme Court did not affect them because they were not a party to the suit.
“The question is: when our names were removed by INEC and replaced with theirs, were we party to the suit? Now they are shouting and trying to misinterpret a clear judgment that has removed them and given us victory. They are just deceiving the public. We will demand for our certificates of return from INEC on Monday (today) because the judgement is clear. We do not need to seek for any further clarifications.
“When the whole exercise wanted to start, INEC wrote a letter to the PDP headquarters to avoid confusion, telling the PDP that the Ejike Oguebego exco was the one that it would recognise based on court order of a Federal High Court in Abuja.”
“Unfortunately, the PDP ignored that letter and, instead, set up a two-man caretaker committee to come to Anambra State to conduct primaries. Of course, there was no room for that caretaker committee to operate in the state because the key to conducting the primaries is the 3-man delegates from the 326 wards in the state.
“It was obvious that without the state exco, the caretaker committee cannot be functional because the people who are supposed to organise the state congress were expected to liaise with the state chairman. From there, they would set up a committee to go to all the wards where the delegates would emerge from for electing candidates into the National and state assemblies. So when they set up this caretaker, the Ejike Oguebego exco went to court and got a judgement recognising it as the right exco therefore making null and void the caretaker committee. The judgment also instructed INEC and the PDP to conduct all the electioneering exercise under the Ejike Oguebego exco including all the candidates who were participating. So, we obeyed the court order and did our primaries as instructed. The exercise was duly monitored by INEC and all the relevant papers were signed.”
He said it would amount to injustice if the court had ruled in favour of the other group comprising of Andy Uba, Stella Oduah and others who allegedly did not undergo any primaries nor even visited Anambra.
“ They just sat in their houses in Abuja. The INEC and the PDP got copies of the results of our primaries and even sent our names to INEC and that was why the list containing our names was published as candidates before they went through the backdoor to remove it”, he stated. (Leadership)
