The African Democratic Congress vice-presidential candidate, Rotimi Amaechi, has likened the legal battle over the party\u2019s presidential candidacy to the events surrounding the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the late Chief MKO Abiola.\n<\/p>\n
Amaechi expressed concern that judicial interventions could frustrate opposition parties whenever they make political progress, warning that Nigeria must avoid a repeat of the events that followed the annulment of the 1993 election.\n<\/p>\n
The June 12 election, widely regarded as one of Nigeria\u2019s freest and fairest polls, was won by Abiola, the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party.\n<\/p>\n
However, the military government of former Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled the election on June 23, 1993, triggering widespread protests and a prolonged pro-democracy struggle.<\/p>\n
Abiola later declared himself president and was arrested and detained by the military government of General Sani Abacha in 1994.\n<\/p>\n
He died in detention on July 7, 1998, shortly after Abacha\u2019s death, without being sworn in as president.<\/p>\n
Amaechi spoke on Tuesday during an interview on Channels Television\u2019s Sunrise Daily<\/em>, while reacting to the Federal High Court judgment voiding the emergence of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as the ADC presidential candidate for the 2027 general election.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing that one should be careful about is that every time you have the opposition making any progress in Nigerian politics, there\u2019s always somebody in the judiciary who would want to know the order.\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt happened to Abiola, which led to the death of Abiola. It\u2019s happening again. None of them cares to know that the interest of the country is important,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n The former Rivers State governor, however, clarified that the ADC was not opposed to judicial intervention or the administration of justice, but insisted that court decisions must be impartial. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not saying don\u2019t do justice. But we\u2019re saying in doing justice, make sure that it\u2019s justice. Don\u2019t pretend to be a member of the other party,\u201d he added.\n<\/p>\n Amaechi said the party would challenge the judgment at the Court of Appeal, expressing confidence that the appellate court would overturn the decision.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going on appeal. We think the Court of Appeal, like all judges of the court of first instance, would naturally tell you that the reason why they are allowed to make mistakes is that there is always a superior court above them.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWhether Lifu is right or wrong, we\u2019ll know when we go to the Court of Appeal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He urged ADC supporters to remain calm and continue their political activities, assuring them that the party was confident of getting justice at the appellate court.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we have done is continue to let our supporters know that everybody should be calm and continue with your campaign. We think that the Court of Appeal will do the right thing,\u201d he stated.\n<\/p>\n Amaechi also questioned the handling of the case by the party\u2019s legal team, arguing that the trial court should have determined the issue of jurisdiction before considering other aspects of the matter.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue before Lifu was the issue of jurisdiction. I don\u2019t know why they proceeded with that. Jurisdiction is the live wire of every case,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n He further wondered why the party\u2019s lawyers did not challenge the procedure adopted by the judge, maintaining that jurisdiction was fundamental to the determination of any case.\n <\/p>\n Source: <\/p>\n The African Democratic Congress vice-presidential candidate, Rotimi Amaechi, has likened the legal battle over the party\u2019s presidential candidacy to the events surrounding the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}