Oshiomhole: Supreme Court Imposed Strangers on Zamfara People

*Says APC did not get justice

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has said that the judgement of the Supreme Court which ceded
all the elective positions contested for in Zamfara state during last general election to the Peoples Democratic Party is tantamount to handing the state over to strangers.

Oshiomhole who broke the party’s silence on last week’s Supreme Court judgement against his party, said APC did not get justice in the case.
He said that the worse APC had expected was for the court to order for a repeat of the elections.

Speaking to journalists who accosted him after the meeting of the National Working Committee on Monday at the national secretariat of APC in Abuja, he lamented that the only option left for his party on the issue was to approach the Court of God for judgement.

When asked for his reaction to the judgement, the party boss said: “How can you ask me how I feel if the people of Zamfara voted for APC in the manner that they did and the court says that those votes were wasted. Meanwhile at the time those votes were cast, a High court had ruled that those candidates were validly nominated.

“Supreme Court had declared as “waste” all the votes for APC in the election of Governor, Senate, House of Representatives and State House of Assembly in favour of the opposition PDP.
“There is something that I learnt from Lord Denning, a famous British Supreme Court Justice, that the law has to be interpreted taken into account the intention of the lawmakers, and try to deliver justice in its purest form,” he said.

Speaking further on the import of the Supreme Court’s ruling, Oshiomhole said that as far as the party is concerned, there was no justice.
“So, there is no justice when ground of technicalities, you imposed on the people of Zamfara state not just a man or a woman but a whole party candidates from Governor to Senate and others that they didn’t elect.

“If the court thought we were wrong, the justices would have demanded tbat we repeat but you cannot use technicalities because we are in a democracy, there is nothing democratic when the court impose strangers to govern a people but we understand that after the Supreme Court we can only go to the Court of God, to that extent we must obey the Court but what we got in Zamfara is a judgement that didn’t translate to justice,” he said.

When pressed further on whether the party will sanction APC members who took the party to court in Zamfara, that resulted in the current misfortune, Oshiomhole, declined comment.