TheCable

Charles Asogwa, director-general of the campaign council for Ike Ekweremadu, a former deputy senate president, says a plan to prevent the lawmaker from contesting the governorship election in Enugu has been uncovered.

In a statement on Sunday, Asogwa said the council has in its possession a court document seeking to block Ekweremadu from contesting on the grounds of zoning.

In the suit marked E/254/2022 seen by TheCable, Oforma Mbannaji, the applicant, argued that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state has zoned the governorship ticket to Enugu east.

The former deputy senate president is from Enugu west.

The applicant prayed the court for an interlocutory injunction preventing Ekweremadu from purchasing the party’s nomination form until the case has been determined.

But Asogwa said the suit is a desperate move to “ridicule all institutions of democracy” in a bid to stop the aspiration of Ekweremadu.

“It has come to our knowledge the plots by enemies of peace, democracy, and Enugu state to use the courts to stop the aspiration of Senator Ike Ekweremadu to the governorship seat of Enugu state,” the statement reads.

“We have in our possession, court processes already filed at the Enugu state high court, with the aim of using the Enugu state judiciary to obtain an injunction barring the senator from contesting the Enugu state gubernatorial election.

“Their festival of lawlessness has seen the State House of Assembly, Local Government Council Chairmen, Town Unions, and lately the Enugu State Council of Traditional Rulers, and, in fact, almost every institution that our people hold in high reverence, needlessly dragged into and ridiculed by their reckless 2023 plots.

“Even institutions that have remained apolitical since ages have been both compelled and induced into issuing communiqués purportedly upholding an inexistent zoning arrangement, while those who resisted their plots have been threatened, detained in prison and or sanctioned.

The Nigerian judiciary should therefore watch the unfolding events in Enugu very closely, for democracy is gravely imperiled when the rule of law is reduced to the rule and unholy schemes of some men, who found themselves in power.

“We wish to restate that no amount of intimidation, attacks, and detention of the supporters and political associates of Senator Ekweremadu; appointment and ‘election’ of known deadly thugs and cultists into state and local government offices; nocturnal meetings and fetish practices; procured press conferences and publications; and certainly no amount of frivolous court processes can stop an idea which time has come.”