Legal Practitioner Insists INEC Must Conduct Fresh Election For 27 Vacant Seats In Rivers

A Calabar-based lawyer, Justice Osai Ahiakwo, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to conduct another election for the 27 vacant seats in the Rivers State House of Assembly following the defection of the lawmakers from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC, over a week ago.

In an interview with the newsmen on Wednesday, he said the interested party should initiate the proceedings of applying to the electoral body to set aside a date for fresh election in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and electoral laws.

He commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu over his intervention to resolve the Rivers crisis as merely applying the alternative dispute-resolution, ADR, mechanisms in persuading the gladiators to sheath their swords.

He said the President took a bold step to mitigate the already-heated political atmosphere in Rivers State.

“Mr. President’s intervention wasn’t in any way contravening the provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended),” he said.

Ahiakwo advised the gladiators to withdraw all pending cases in courts of law, saying once this is done, nothing can keep alive the contending issues before the court of law.

“Our legal system has been in existence even before the declaration of its independence as a nation. We have a very vast jurisprudence covering numerous aspects of our collective lives. Immediately the gladiators accept the withdrawal of the cases in courts, non-litigants not clothed with locus standi cannot cry more than the bereaved,” he said.

He stated that no court had delivered final judgement in the pending cases before the Honourable Justices, maintaining that neither the Rivers State High Court nor the Federal High Court in Abuja has concluded the cases before them.

“To the best of my legal knowledge, there is no final pronouncements of the courts adjudicating on the legality or otherwise of the mirage of issues surrounding the political leadership tussle in Rivers State.

“What is perceived as judgment of the court is an interlocutory order made by the court restraining either the defected lawmakers or the Executive Governor of the State equally restraining him from certain actions against the aggrieved lawmakers pending the final determination of the civil actions before the court,” he said