Kalu: Tribunal Has Vindicated Me on Name Validation 

 Juliet Akoje in Abuja 

Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu,has said he had been vindicated on the validation of his name by the ruling of the National Assembly Elections Petitions Tribunal sitting in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, which also upheld his election.

In a statement yesterday in Abuja by his Chief Press Secretary (CPS), Mr. Levinus Nwabughiogu, Kalu, upon receipt of the news, expressed immense gratitude to the judiciary for recognising that he followed due process and other extant laws to validate his name.

While also thanking the people of Bende federal constituency on whose mandate he stood, the deputy speaker reiterated that his confidence in the judiciary to do justice to issues at all times was unwavering.

“I have never doubted the ability of the judiciary at any level to do justice to issues. My confidence in them has always been unwavering. It has, once again, vindicated me on this matter and also upheld my mandate as the elected representative of the people, in this case, Bende federal constituency of Abia State. I am grateful,” Kalu said. 

Candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25, 2023 national assembly elections, Frank Chinasa, had petitioned the tribunal, seeking the nullification of Kalu’s election on the account of alleged inconsistency in his name change.

Also, shortly after Kalu’s first term election in 2019, one Okay Ezeala, had also approached the court seeking the nullification of his election on the same ground.

But Justice O A. Chijioke of an Umuahia High Court while delivering his judgement on the matter on August 25, 2021 ruled in favour of Kalu and subsequently awarded a cost to the petitioner for wasting the time of the court in a frivolous suit.

Ridiculously, Labour Party’s Chinasa also dusted the same matter that had been laid to rest, fronting before the tribunal after this year’s general elections.

In a remarkable, unanimous judgment by the three man panel read by the Chairman, Justice Samson Paul Gang, yesterday, August 22, 2023 in Umuahia, the tribunal dismissed the petition and denied all the prayers of the petitioner for lacking in merit.

The panel held that Kalu’s certificates were never forged and that the names in the certificates were all his, adding that Kalu had since harmonised his names through a Deed Pool published in a federal gazette, backed with a newspaper publication of change of name, insisting that the petitioner could not establish any case of certificate forgery against him.