It is no longer news that the National and State Assembly Election Petition Tribunal for Imo State has been relocated from Owerri to Mararaba in Nasarawa State. This is following threats to the lives of members of the panel, which prompted the President of the Court of Appeal to approve their request to be relocated to a neutral ground.
Before this relocation there have been allegations that some moves had been made by top leaders of the APC to try to compromise the judges, and when this did not immediately yield the needed result, efforts were also made to frustrate them, including denying them access to a good venue for their sittings.
The All Progressives Congress in Imo State has been notorious for exploiting the security situation in Imo State to their own political advantage. If they are not framing their political opponents up with trumped up allegations over insecurity, they are sending Ebubeagu and Tiger Base officials to harass their opponents.
If there was any doubts that the APC are not telling us everything they know about the security situation in Imo State, then, the method they adopted in rigging the 2023 general elections should clear every doubts about their level of involvement in the killings and other security incidents that have pervaded Imo since Uzodimma was imposed on us by the Supreme Court.
APC practically stole every single seat they are holding today through the barrels of guns. The areas where they couldn’t succeed in harassing and terrorising INEC officials to rewrite the results, they manufactured results from areas where election couldn’t hold due to insecurity.
Given their notoriety for reaping from the bad security situation in Imo State, one would not blame those who accuse the APC of trying to use gunmen to intimidate the judges into turning justice on its head. The APC might have found it easier to have their way with these judges had they remained in Owerri where they are in charge of both conventional and unconventional security.
The protests with the scanty crowd they were able to hire is a clear demonstration of their frustration with their inability to perpetrate their diabolic agenda against these justices.
