Angry Oshiomhole laments as Zamfara PDP candidates get certificates of return

An angry All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has opted to turn to God after what he saw as denial of justice to his party in Zamfara State.
He spoke as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) presented certificates of return to Bello Matawalle as governor-elect of Zamfara state; the deputy governor-elect, Mahdi Gusau, three senators-elect and seven members-elect to the House of Representatives also got the certificates in Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members, along with those who contested on the opposition party’s platform for seats in the State House of Assembly, are all beneficiaries of the Supreme Court judgment that invalidated all votes cast for the APC in all elections, except the presidential one.
The court ruled there was no primaries conducted by the APC in the State, so all votes for the party in the national and state elections were wasted votes.
Oshiomhole told journalists in Abuja on Monday: “How can you ask me how I feel if the people of Zamfara voted for us 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
“There is something that I learnt from Lord Denning, a famous British Supreme Court Justice, that the law has to be interpreted taking into account the intention of the lawmakers and try to deliver justice in its purest form.
“So, there is no justice when on the ground of technicalities, you imposed on the people of Zamfara state, not just a man or a woman, but whole party candidates from governor to senate and others that they didn’t elect.
“If the court thought we were wrong, the justice would have demanded that we repeat. But you can not use technicalities because we are in a democracy, there is nothing democratic when the court imposes 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 judgment that didn’t translate to justice.”
However, speaking before the presentation of the certificates to Mattawalen and others, INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said:.
“I want to reiterate the importance of conducting proper primaries before elections in order to reduce the spate of litigation associated with them,” he said.
“At the moment, there are 809 pre-election cases pending in various courts across the country challenging the conduct of primaries by political parties for the 2019 general election.
“This is clearly more than the total number of petitions currently before the various election petition tribunals nationwide challenging the outcome of the main elections.
“In our last update, the commission reported that 25 certificates of return had been withdrawn and issued to persons declared winners by courts of law. Since then, three more certificates have been withdrawn by court order. With the Zamfara case, the figure has now risen to 64.
“In addition, the commission is studying nine more judgements we were served in the last one week in which primary elections conducted by different political parties were upturned by the courts.