Protest Rocks Plateau Over Appeal Court Judgements Against PDP Lawmakers

Massive street protests have rocked Jos, the Plateau State capital following the Court of Appeal judgements that nullified the elections of PDP National Assembly members from the State.

Our correspondent recalls that the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja had recently nullified the elections of two PDP Senators from Plateau North, Simon Mwadkhon, and Plateau South, Napoleon Bali, including four members of the House of Representatives on account of alleged non-compliance with a State High Court order on party congresses, which is said to be a pre-election matter.

Early Wednesday morning, thousands of PDP supporters from the 17 LGAs of the State came out in large numbers, blocked the ever-busy Mararraban Jama’re Roundabout, which is the gateway to the state capital city, to protest against what they called injustice meted against them by the Court of Appeal .

They also carried placards with inscriptions such as “No room for political manipulation”, “Lets protect our heritage”, “Do not end our democracy, Plateau for PDP”, “Our voices must be heard, Mr. President caution the Judiciary”, and “Our land need peace,” among others.

Also, in an open letter addressed to the chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC) by a group, Concerned Stakeholders in Plateau State, read by the group leader, Yakubu Ibrahim, he called on the chairman of NJC to constitute a commission inquiry into the nature of the failure of Court of Appeal to follow judicial precedents.

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According to him, the President of Court of Appeal should immediately disband the Plateau State Election Appeal Court Panel and a new one should be constituted to hear the remaining appeals as the current panel has shown manifest bias to unduly favour the APC candidates.

The concerned stakeholders further said that the patently prejudiced and inconsistent judgements of the panel already delivered in the appeals should also be subjected to judicial review, adding that the judgements were given without substantive and procedural jurisdiction.