The candidate of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the pending Anambra Central Senatorial election has challenged Chris  Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment on his stand on the pending election election.
Ngige had said during an interview at Alor, his home town, that there would be no election in the zone unless all the court cases instituted by various litigants on the Anambra Central election, were disposed of.
But Umeh in an interview with journalists recently faulted Ngige saying he could not fathom under what capacity the minister spoke categorically that the poll could never take place until all court cases were cleared.
Umeh said: “Ngige should not be talking about an election he voluntarily withdrew from as it no longer concerns him. He should concentrate on his job as minister of labour and employment and provide jobs for the teeming unemployed Nigerians. This is not a labour-related matter and he should not be running his mouth as if he has diarrhea of the mouth.
“He does not work for the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) that is empowered by the constitution to conduct elections. I am aware that INEC has a legal department that is staffed by qualified lawyers and if there is any matter that will prevent the commission from conducting election, the commission will say so at any point in time, based on prevailing circumstances.
“This is not the first time that Ngige had made this claim; he made it before at Easter on a radio programme and said the same thing at an APC meeting, thereby corroborating all that we have been hearing that APC will do everything to ensure that INEC does not conduct the Anambra Central election.
“President Buhari and APC should not let Ngige drag Federal Government into disrepute through his voodoo politics. The boast by Ngige is an indication that the party and government are dictating to INEC on how to conduct its affairs. Ngige should not be allowed to plunge Anambra into anarchy again.
“He should not use his membership of the ruling party to intimidate anyone. In fact, this is enough for the president to sack him from the Federal Executive Council for embarrassing APC and the federal government.”
“Anambra Central, where he was angling to represent, has not had a senator for close to two years and he and his party are celebrating. Yet, he is enjoying his appointment as a minister and doing everything to frustrate the conduct of the election. He is bringing bad name to the Buhari- led federal government, and he should be sacked.”
Going down memory lane, Umeh recalled that it was the same Ngige, who in 2003, went into an unholy agreement, just to be rigged into office, adding that it was his hasty reneging of the agreement that brought mayhem to the state, where property worth billions of naira were destroyed. This, he said, led to his kidnap, which caused Anambra to suffer for three years.
Umeh said further: “In 2015 election, he contested for the senate and got only 20,000 votes, while I got 86,000, and PDP used soldiers to rig the election. Ngige was to go to court, but when eventually Buhari won, he withdrew and got a ministerial job, and today he is fighting to stop the same election from holding, yet he is keeping his ministerial seat and making the people he wanted to represent to suffer. Is that not wickedness, lack of respect for due process and total disregard for the people?”
He also said that by the judgment of Justice Anwuli Chikere on 14th March 2017, INEC was completely free to hold the rerun election and warned Ngige not intimidate INEC because the era of intimidation by the ruling party had gone.
He added: “Let me state clearly that there is nothing, no legal impediment anymore, against the conduct of this Anambra Central election that has been pending. The cases Ngige was citing in his outburst clearly cannot stop INEC from conducting that election. The issue of the eligible candidates who can take part in a court ordered fresh election or rerun election has been permanently settled by the Supreme Court of Nigeria in its judgment in the case of Labour Party versus INEC, whose judgment was delivered on the 13th February 2009. That judgment was an endorsement of judgment delivered by the Court of Appeal, Kaduna Division on 10th April 2008, to the effect that elections that are ordered by court through nullification do not admit new candidates.
“Labour Party had attempted to put a new candidate in a governorship election in Adamawa State, which was nullified by the Court of Appeal tribunal, and the Court of Appeal, Kaduna division, in a very detailed judgment, said such an election does not admit fresh candidate as only candidates that were qualified and took part in the earlier election could participate in the fresh or rerun election.  Labour Party dragged the matter to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court affirmed that judgment. Unfortunately, people like Ngige are pretending not to know this position of the law.
“We recall that as early as January 2016, when PDP and APC purported to be trying to conduct a primary to choose a candidate that will take part n the election, I cried out that the law did not permit such futile exercise and they didn’t want to accept it. Today, it is clear because INEC submitted to this decision of the Supreme Court in the conduct of all the fresh election ordered by the Court of Appeal across the country, after the 2015 general elections.
“Candidates that were disqualified by the final decision of the Court of Appeal were not allowed to take part in fresh or rerun elections. It was like that in Kogi State where PDP challenged APC for non conduct of primaries in at least four constituencies, two senatorial districts, one federal constituency and two house of assembly seats, as it happened in Anambra Central.. It was PDP that challenged the APC winners at the tribunal, and those elections were nullified. In the fresh elections and repeat elections ordered in that state, APC did not participate in all those elections and PDP won all of them, and all the winners have gone to represent their people.
On the scenario in Anambra state, Umeh said: “In Anambra State, where the same situation arose, APC and PDP refused to accept the position of the law and have continued to do all kinds of things to sabotage the law. You are all aware that after the Court of Appeal nullified the election, the PDP candidate went back to the court of appeal to  set aside its judgment, and when that failed, she headed to the Supreme Court and on 10th January 2017 the Supreme Court, in an unanimous judgment, dismissed her appeal, and affirmed that the judgment of the Court of Appeal on that matter was final.
“Last year, when INEC was to conduct the rerun election on 5th March 2016, PDP, Peter Obi under the cover of PDP, whose candidate was disqualified by the Court of Appeal and whose candidate had defected to the APC, went to the Federal High Court and demanded that they be allowed to put another person to contest.

POSTED BY:OPUOMONI PRIYE
DATE:04/28/2017