PDP: Taraba Speaker files suit to oppose Kefas Agbu’s candidacy
The ongoing pre-election matters involving Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates before the federal high court in Jalingo, Taraba State, have taken on a new dimension.
On Thursday, the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Joseph Albasu Kunini, applied to join the suit challenging the party’s selection of Kefas Agbu as the state’s governorship candidate.
Professor Jerome Nyameh and Dr. Hilkiah Bubajoda Mafindi, it would be recalled had earlier dragged Agbu, PDP and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to court seeking the immediate disqualification of Agbu on the grounds that he did not purchase the party’s expression of interest and nomination forms.
The PDP guber candidate in their writs of summons was said not to be among the aspirants screened by the party’s committee in Bauchi State.
They said the party’s flag bearer presided over the screening of all the aspirants that jostled for the positions of the state House of Assembly.
The speaker had filed his application as an interested party via a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Reuben Atabo.
The three aspirants who are now of the view that Part VII, Article 1 of the Electoral Guidelines for the Primary Elections of PDP, 2022, have been violated, said the party’s candidate failed to resign as the state party chairman before joining the race.
In his application for the joinder, the speaker is contending that having emerged second, in the governorship primary election of the party, he ought to be declared winner of the primary after Agbu’s nomination is nullified.
It would be recalled that after the adoption of written addresses by Nyameh, Agbu, PDP and INEC counsels, at the federal high court presided by Justice Simon A. Amobeda, the ruling on the suit was indefinitely adjourned.
Professor Nyameh clearly submitted that the primary was held on May 25, which was only six days after Agbu resigned, and many days after the screening of aspirants on April 28, when he was still the state party chairman.
He further argued that Agbu only resigned via a letter dated May 17, 2022, which was received at the national headquarters on May 19.
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