Abia State thrown into disarray as two different candidates lay claim to being governor

ABIA State remains in unprecedented political turmoil at the moment with two different men claiming to be the state governor after the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) issued a certificate of return to Dr Uchechukwu Ogah yesterday.

 

During last year's governorship elections, Inec had declared Dr Okezie Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the duly elected Abia State governor. However, Dr Ogah went to court to challenge the decision and on Monday, Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja ordered the removal of Governor Ikpeazu and instructed Inec to issue a certificate of return to Dr Ogah, who was the first runner-up in the state PDP governorship primaries.

 

In his ruling, Justice Abang had ordered the removal of Dr Ikpeazu after finding him guilty of not presenting relevant tax certificates along with his forms submitted to Inec. He held that Dr Ikpeazu, who emerged as the PDP candidate in the state for the 2015 governorship election on the strength of the primaries, was not qualified to be the PDP candidate.

 

Inec commissioner in charge of the southeast, Ambassador Lawrence Nwuruku, presented the certificate of return to Dr Ogah in Abuja in accordance with the judgment of the court. He later said that the court directed the commission to issue the certificate with immediate effect.

Ambassador Nwuruku said: “The situation is we are simply obeying the court order. The court said with immediate effect, we should issue him a certificate of return and that is what we have done.

 

“If the court tomorrow issues another order, we will obey the same. In this case, the court ordered us to issue certificate to the person who won the election, that is Uchechukwu Ogah and I was the person that issued the same certificate of return to Governor Ikpeazu because he was declared the winner."

 

A few hours after Dr Ogah collected his certificate of return in Abuja, an Abia State High Court in Osisioma stopped the chief judge of the state or any other judge from inaugurating Dr Ogah as directed by Justice Abang on Monday. The presiding judge in the court, Justice C H Ahuchaogu, equally made a belated order stopping Inec from issuing a certificate of return to Dr Ogah as the winner of the 2015 governorship election in the state.

 

All this has created confusion on who is the valid governor, with the PDP in the state describing the order of the Federal High Court in Abuja as a threat to democracy in the country. Abia State PDP chairman Chief Johnson Onuigbo, said the party would resist any attempt by any person or group to undermine the peace in the state.