30 JUNE 2016-Uche Ogah, the new (Peoples Democratic Party, PDP) governor of Abia State after a High court ruling sacked Okezie Ikpeazu, who was barely settled in the State government House, has set his sight on governance with close sources saying his first key moves is to streamline the state revenue sources and bring together aggrieved members of the party following the court order that removed Ikpeazu.
Ikpeazu was declared unqualified following questions over his tax returns during the December 2014 governorship elections. The Judge in the case, Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja ruled the tax returns as fake and declared Ogah as the qualified candidate.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Thursday, 30 JUNE 2016, officially issued the certificate of return to Uche Ogah who initially came second at the PDP governorship primaries.
The South East INEC Commissioner, Amb. Lawrence Nwuruku said after the certificate of return was issued that the Commission did what it did following court orders.
“if the court tomorrow orders a reversal of the action, INEC would not hesitate to do its bidding. The situation is that we are simply obeying the court order,” he said.
“The court said with immediate effect without wasting of time, we should issue him Certificate of Return and that is what we have done – to obey the court order. If the court tomorrow issues another order, we would obey the same.” He added that he was the person who gave the Certificate of Return to Gov. Ikpeazu as he was declared winner. “Now, the court has said otherwise. One thing we know is that we are not above the law and we cannot disobey the laws of the land.”
The INEC’s Director of Publicity, Oluwole Osaze-Uzi, had earlier affirmed that the decision followed an order by an Abuja Federal High Court directing INEC to immediately issue Certificate of Return to Mr. Ogah.
