SOUTH EAST Patriots’ Assembly (SEPA), a pro-Bola Ahmed Tinubu pan-Igbo pressure group rooting for the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) standard bearer in next Saturday’s presidential election has hailed Appeal Court’s dismissal of another appeal filed by former Minister of State for Education, Mr. Emeka Nwajiuba against Tiinubu’s emergence at the party’s presidential primary. It urged the ex-minister to join the winning train before Saturday February 25.
SEPA’s Chief Media Strategist, Hon. Emeka Nwankpa, in a statement in Abuja yesterday praised the court for not yielding to what he called ‘’Nwajiuba’s unyielding antics to scuttle the democratic choice of progressives at the last APC presidential primaries that saw the overwhelming election of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as presidential candidate to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari come May 29, 2023’’.
Part of SEPA’s statement read: ‘’We hail the ruling of this Court of Appeal in its entirety. It is a stitch in time. Mr. Emeka Nwajiuba’s antics is capable of portraying the entire political direction of the South East wing of the APC in bad light. He was not the only aspirant from the region who contested against Bola Tinubu hence he has shown he is a bad party man representing Ndigbo. SEPA is against such tendentious treachery which is alien to our people’s culture.
‘’We shudder and wonder why Emeka Nwajiuba, the former junior minister of education is still carrying on with his exaggerated expectation that he could have become APC’s next presidential candidate in an open party primaries where he was conspicuously missing and witnessed by the whole world.
‘’We really do not know what fuels his ego when one would have expected him to bury his head and embrace the outcome of an exercise from which he ran away in fear. Except he is acting out a dubious script of a spoiler, the man should apologize as a failed minister in a country where educational standards abysmally nose-dived under his watch.
‘’In saner climes, as a former minister of state for education whose senior minister, Adama Adamu publicly declared that he failed, Nwajiuba should never seek a higher office more so the office of the president. But alas, it is not Nwajiuba’s fault because his qualification for appointment as minister of state was that he was part of a motley crowd that purchased a presidential form for Candidate Muhammadu Buhari in 2015’’, the group said.
Hon. Emeka Nwankpa noted that his group will stop at nothing to canvass for votes for Tinubu among all well-meaning Ndigbo resident in the South East and across the entire country to ensure that Bola Ahmed Tinubu becomes the next president riding on his sterling record as a tested and trusted manager of Nigeria’s delicate diversity, maintaining that the nation needed him at a time as this.
‘’SEPA recalls that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu made Lagos a sweet home to all Nigerians as former governor of the foremost State. Till date, our Igbo brothers and sisters are the most travelled among all Nigerians’
‘’Therefore the next president of our collective choice in the next dispensation is the man who proved to be an excellent host to our people. The Jagaban eminently ticks the boxes, and so he has our votes on February 25, 2023. This is our message to all Igbo communities resident in the South East and across the entire states of the federation.
‘’As we commence the process of dropping the anchor of the campaigns, and as we stand on the threshold of history, we will not forget those who stand by us and those doing otherwise but still have the opportunity to align themselves, we shall march out in our large numbers to make this happen.
‘’A million Emeka Nwajiuba’s will not stop us. We seize this opportunity to advise and caution the former minister against acting as a spoiler in the ongoing campaign to elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu as it is in the enlightened interest of Ndigbo to so do’’, Nwankpa said, noting that notable sons and daughters of Ndigbo currently engaged in the project to mainstream the south east to national politics are irrevocably committed to the cause.
It will be recalled that the Appeal Court in Abuja on Friday, February 17, 2023 dismissed another appeal filed by the former minister of state against the APC’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ruling that the suit lacked of merit and described the appellant as a busy body and a meddlesome interloper. The court upheld the judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja, which had also on 15 December, 2022 dismissed the suit filed by Nwajiuba for lack of merit.
The Federal High Court had in delivering the judgment in the suit filed by the former minister and Incorporated Trustees of Rights for all International, against APC and Tinubu in the suit No: FHC/ABJ/CS/ 942/ 2022, with Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Attorney General of the Federation and INEC, as other parties sued, dismissed the whole suit fort lacking in merit.
Also, the judge, Justice Inyang Eden Ekwo, on the issue of abuse of court process raised by Babatunde Ogala SAN, counsel to APC and Tinubu, averted its mind to Section 823(1) and 825 (1) (b) of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2020 to hold that the 1st Plaintiff (Incorporated Trustees of Rights for all International) had deviated from its objectives as a Non-Governmental Organization to seeking politically motivated litigations and thus made a consequential order dissolving the 1st Plaintiff effective immediately.
The court ordered the Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission to take over the activities of the 1st Plaintiff.
Nwajiuba, who resigned from President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet to contest for the APC presidential primary, had sought, among others a declaration of the court to nullify the votes scored by Tinubu in the last APC’s presidential primary election on alleged account of vote buying, but the court said since he was not present during the primary to prove his case, it amounted to just hearsay.
