There May Be No Governor In Imo State Should Supreme Court Fails To Review Her Judgement - Irona
The ex-deputy governor of Imo state, Hon Engr Gerald Irona has said that there will be no governor in Imo State if the Supreme Court fails to upturn her January 14 judgment delivered in favour of Sen. Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressive Congress, APC for the March 2019 Imo state gubernatorial election in 2019.
Being Part of a recorded audio statement of Hon. Engr. Gerald Ironna (Supreme Court's sacked Deputy Governor) at the Awareness Creation meeting held in the office of Prof. Pat Utomi in Victoria Island, Lagos, with Civil Society members on Tuesday 4th February, 2020, Irona stated that;
“…we have audio evidences of how the DSS was calling members of the Tribunal and the Appeal court, giving them instructions on what to do and we are ready to tender the conversations between the Director-General of the SSS and some of the Judges involved. So, this matter is survival of democracy. The country is threatened.
"Let me just give you an instance to what the Senior Advocate reads, If you look at what Senator Hope Uzodinma presented to the tribunal upon which the Supreme Court of Nigeria gave their judgement; by tomorrow, we will be publishing booth by booth result presented by Senator Hope Uzodinma in ThisDay Newspaper.
“Now, if you look at No. 69 on the table he presented, we have a total of 492 registered voters. Senator Hope Uzodinma gave to APC 819 votes. These things were in records of the tribunal. He gave himself 819 votes out of 492 registered voters; registered voters not even accredited., not even PVC collected. And then awarded 7 to the PDP. That is 334 votes more than registered voters in that polling Unit.
“Now, you go to another Polling Unit among the 388 Polling Units, No. 285, on the table presented by Senator Hope Uzodinma, we have 449 registered voters out of which he gave the APC 780 votes and gave PDP 4 votes and you have 335 over voters in that particular booth. Look, I don’t want to continue with these. But if you look at the summary of the voting patterns, Senator Hope Uzodinma got average of between 12% and 15% of votes in other Polling Units but when you come to results he presented, he had 98% of votes casted in those 388 polling booths, including my constituency where he couldn’t win House of Assembly; he couldn’t win election; including His Excellency’s the Governor’s village of Mbutu where he defeated His Excellency and His Excellency couldn’t score up to 10 votes and he scored 800 and something votes.
“So, if you look at these, the Supreme Court of Nigeria did not; …and let me even say this; they never believed that we would find out. But, let me say one thing; we have records of fighting. When we were at the National Assembly, the then President Jonathan wanted to dictate to us on who would be the Speaker of the House. We said “No, you cannot.” He addressed us and we say you cannot! And we defied his order and voted and it was televised. This I’m telling you is the 7th House; 2011 when Tambuwal was the Speaker. So, we were at the National Assembly then. So we have history of struggle in our blood so we are not cowards. We were defeated in Civil War, our place was destroyed (but we are alive today).
“A day before this judgement they brought Army; brought Police from Enugu (82 Div.), brought from Port Harcourt, brought MOPOL from everywhere to Imo state. But we told our people “let’s hear the judgement’, and we have heard the judgement and we believe that we have window for redress. If they refuse to do that, there will not be governor of Imo state; there won’t be governance in Imo state. We are crying to the whole world to hear us and we are appealing to the conscience of fair-minded spirited Nigerians and all over the world to rise up and protect democracy.
“Finally, the man called Senator Hope Uzodinma had never won an election before and I can tell you this. When he went to the Senate, I was running for House of Reps and he the senate. It was our votes; he lost in his Federal Constituency. He had four Local Governments in his Federal Constituency and I had three; it was our votes that made him to win. But to show you that we are not lying, there was a rerun election in Imo state two weeks ago in his Federal Constituency – the Orlu/Orsu/Oru-East Federal Constituency. He is from Oru-East. His candidate lost and the PDP candidate won; in his own constituency even as a sitting governor. You see, the momentum of his victory at the Supreme Court would have made his candidate to win.
We will not legitimize this illegality. Among other things, help us to insist that those judges must repeal themselves. Help us to escalate these facts; let Nigerians see the facts. We will be happy when Nigerians see the facts and the Supreme Court says ‘all these things you have said we have heard but we won’t do it’. Then we will now go home and say “Buhari, rule other parts of Nigeria but Hope will not rule us”. I hope I am not making threats? But I am telling you that democracy is under threat in Nigeria
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