Court Verdict: Sen Owan Enoh remains our governorship candidate —APC

PRESS RELEASE

COURT VERDICT:SEN.OWAN ENOH REMAINS OUR GOVERNORSHIP CANDIDATE—APC

The All Progressives Congress,APC in Cross River State has reacted to trending media report purporting that an Abuja based High Court has ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission,INEC to recognize Pastor Usani Usani as the Cross River APC Governorship Candidate

instead of Sen.John Owan Enoh earlier presented and recognized by the party.

The APC said the latest order was "an overnight injunction which has no place to fester" adding that it's just one of those 'jankara' verdicts that has been exposed"

The party Spokesperson,Mr. Bassey Ita said " for the benefit of the doubt,no injunction that is granted after the INEC had published the final list of candidates can stand. The final list was published in the afternoon of Wednesday,January 30th while the court order came in the evening, hours after, making it an overnight injunction".

According to the party "this is one of the reasons we urged the President when he came for campaigns to call his Niger Delta Affairs Minister to order. We told him the gospel truth,that he is a distraction to the party's chances of elections victory including that of Mr. President and he has to look deeply into this advise with a view to taking drastic actions".

The party said the Minister has clearly showed the whole world that he is truly doing the bidding of an opponent by this singular display of anti-party activity adding that he has lost his sense of comfort and relevant in the APC and should therefore quit the party to avoid being disgraced.

The statement said the said judgement by Justice Ekwo was one of those acts of Judicial rascality that the President Muhammadu Buhari's administration was irked about adding that "it's ridiculous to grant an overnight of this nature".

 

The party therefore gave detail explanations about its position on the judgement thus: 

GENTLEMEN,THIS IS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

About 5:30pm on Wednesday 30th January 2019, as the Presidential Campaign was going on in Calabar, we were served an application asking Justice Ekwo of the Federal High Court Abuja to stop INEC from publishing the APC list of candidates submitted by the party and accepted by INEC. A Hearing Notice requiring all parties to be in court yesterday was also attached.

First, if you are served with such an application, the rules of court allow you 2 days to respond with out which the application should ordinarily not be heard. This was brought to the Judge’s attention and he agreed, meaning that the application was not heard.

The judge then ordered that parties should maintain status quo. It is the “status quo” that mischief makers are now misconstruing to claim that Sen.John Owan Enoh is no longer the candidate. Please remind them that status quo is that:

1. Our candidates won their primaries;

2. APC submitted their names to INEC;

3. INEC published the National Assembly Final List 2 weeks ago and the Governorship/State Assembly Final List yesterday morning prior to the court’s sitting. And these lists contain our candidates.

There is therefore no basis in law for the pending application to be granted on Tuesday when the case will again be heard.

Please examine well the attached 2 pages of the court’s order of yesterday and you will not find what they claim. Mischievously they are circulating only the first page which usually contains what an applicant asked for. The second page is the more important because it sets out what the court granted.

Finally, we should remind them that it is now 30 days to the 2nd March 2019 election. Do you think that the Honourable Minister has resigned in compliance with the constitution? Your guess is as good as ours!

The Court Order will follow soon.