A socio-political group based in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, the Save Abia Team, at the weekend declared that the immediate past Governor of the state, Chief Theodore Orji, was the motivating force behind the former senator representing Abia North Senatorial District, Mao Ohuabunwa of the Peoples Democratic Party, who was removed a fortnight ago by the Court of Appeal sitting in Owerri, the Imo State capital.
The leader of the team, Mazi Chinasa Okorie, said the mutilation of the result of the senatorial election in Abia North in the last poll could not have been possible without the executive connivance of the former governor, who “facilitated” the electoral malfeasance.
Okorie’s words: “The moment the former governor and some chieftains of the PDP stormed the state headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and threatened the staff, we knew that the results would be tampered with. What we did not envisage was the blatant magnitude of the electoral fraud.
“Our team had expected that the Electoral Act should have prescribed punishment for this kind of court-certified infraction instead of just slamming the process and allowing the culprits and their accomplices to go scot-free. It is a travesty of the law, which cannot grow our democracy. We need to set examples with polling deviants to foreclose recurrence of such improprieties.
“It is obvious with the ruling of the Appeal Court that the Peoples Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) candidate and former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Kalu, won that election. He will win again in the forthcoming rerun.”
It will be recalled that the Court of Appeal sitting in Owerri upturned the ruling of the Abia State Elections Petitions Tribunal, which had upheld Ohuabunwa’s election following the petition of the candidate of the PPA, Orji Uzor Kalu, and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct a fresh election.
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