New Telegraph

Obi-Okoye: Lawmakers exercised rights to amend the law

To Chairman of APGA in the state, Barr Ifeatu Obi-Okoye, the Anambra State House of Assembly merely exercised its rights to amend the state’s electoral law

Your party is being accused of trying to high-jack the local government election. What are your views on this?
That is far from the point. We as a political party cannot do that because we do not have such powers to do so. However what we see here is that other political parties are afraid of losing the election because they know that we are on ground.
They are from Anambra State and the projects being executed by the APGA government have touched their local government areas and their communities and they do not have anything to tell Anambra electorate for them to vote for them hence they are trying to find a short cut to stop the election.

But there were amendments made by the State House of Assembly which they say are a pointer to the allegations?
To be candid, those spurious allegations go to no issue because the legislature has the constitutional right to make laws and amend laws for the good of the people of Anambra State which they are part of .
Laws are made for man and not man for law. As a legal practitioner there are laid down processes of challenging what one sees as not being properly done and it is incumbent upon them to follow that process to challenge it .
I have never seen a situation where the court has stopped an election that has been fixed. The process must go it’s full course and then the court would now come in to say if what was done was right or wrong .
Recall that someone had gone to court to ask for the status of his tenure as a governor and part of his prayers was that the governorship election in that state should be stopped.
But the court did not grant him that angle of his prayers and ruled that the election has been fixed and that the process should run its full course while the matter is being entertained at the court.
The election was conducted and a winner was declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). But after some days the Supreme Court pronouncement said there ought not to have been an election in the first place and the litigant won his case and he returned to his office as governor and served out his tenure as governor.
So for IPAC or say other political parties threatening that they would go to court to stop the election is funny because the election would go on and my views are without prejudice to whatever pronouncement that any law court would make and I am not preempting the courts.
Come to think of it, we are not aware of any matter before the court and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has not been served any notice in that regard.
It least, as I speak with you and remember the the Chairman of Anambra State Independent Electoral Commission (ANSIEC) spoke recently, saying that the Commission was not aware of any case against it and no process have have been served to them

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