TheCable

Tonye Cole, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers state, says nothing will stop his party from participating in the election.

Cole spoke on Monday while addressing journalists at the launch of the “office of the citizen” by #FixPolitics, a civil society organisation (CSO), in Lagos.

Last Thursday, a federal high court sitting in Port Harcourt disqualified Cole from contesting the 2023 governorship election.

In May, Cole, a former executive director of Sahara Group, had won the APC governorship ticket in Rivers state.

However, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Rivers had filed a suit seeking to disqualify the APC candidate over allegations that delegates that voted at the party’s primary were not qualified, and that Cole has dual citizenship.

Emmanuel Obile, the presiding judge, ruled that Cole was not eligible to contest over dual citizenship and that the APC primary was not monitored by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Speaking on Monday, Cole said the APC in Rivers had appealed the judgment.

“It is two different things. In 2019, there was an internal crisis in the APC, which made it very easy for the court to leave us out of the ballot. This time around, it is totally different,” he said.

“What I am going to say is that we are going to be on the ballot. Nothing is going to stop us.

“The judgment is from a lower court and we are in the appeal court. All the issues will end up at the supreme court. So, we are going to appeal court and to the supreme court, at that point, it will all be done and settled.

“We trust the judiciary that they will do the right thing. This is about competition and it is about making sure everyone gets to the ballot so that they can compete with the best that they have.

“What we bring to the table this time around, we have people that are afraid of our competition, so they won’t allow us to be on the ballot. We will be on the ballot, compete, and we will win.”

In the 2019 elections, INEC excluded APC from the polls after a court ruling nullified the primaries conducted by factions of the party.