By Emmanual  Aziken
Businessman, politician Chief Great Ogboru was the candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party, DPP in the court ordered rerun gubernatorial election in January 2011 and the April 2011 election, both of which were won by Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

Ogboru, however, disputes the declaration as made by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC and thus has resorted to the courts for arbitration. Following last Thursday’s decision of the Court of Appeal that Ogboru ‘s quest to overturn the result of the January rerun was an academic exercise, Vanguard took up the opposition candidate on his opinion and options in a telephone interview. Excerpts:

HOW did you receive the judgment?

Like everybody who has been following the case we are very surprised because we knew that we had a valid case in the Court of Appeal but unfortunately the Justices abdicated their responsibility by saying that the appeal was academic. But it cannot be academic because it was the Court of Appeal that ordered a re-run election on the 9th of November. That election took place on the 6th of January.

Now, if INEC had declared that I won the election in January would my tenure have ended on the 29th of May? The answer simply is no, which means that before you determine whether or not the appeal is academic you must first establish if somebody was validly returned.

In this case what is being questioned is not the tenure of Uduaghan but his return which we say was not valid by virtue of the fact that he did not have majority of the lawful votes cast in that election. That is what the court is supposed to determine.

If the court found that I had the majority of valid votes cast in that election then what the court should do, I mean from what the lawyers have told us is to do what they did in Anambra State to vitiate immediately the elections of April 2011 and then uphold the elections of January 2011 and then I would be sworn in as Governor and then the constitution says that from the date you are sworn in you have four years to serve.

So, there is no way on earth that our petition could be said to be academic because there are two sides to the coin. If Uduaghan won the election in January 2011, then off course he has served his tenure and then our questioning the election in that case could be termed academic. But in this case it has not been determined that he was validly elected.

In any case, you have to go one step backward, when we were given the right by the Court of Appeal to contest a re-run election it was presumed that the outcome of that election would be challenged. If we had a right to participate in an election, how come we do not have the right to challenge an unlawful or invalid return?

Those are the issues that the court should have addressed its mind to but unfortunately failed to do so and that is why we say in our view and in the view of the constitution of Nigeria that the court abdicated its responsibility and did not hear our own appeal, but just went straight to the appeal of somebody who won at the tribunal which should not be the case.

It should have been a cross appeal which means that they should have heard the two together, but they only took one and left the other.They heard our appeal but did not give judgment on it. They abdicated their responsibility.

That is why we said that we are going to put it to the Supreme Court to test it because if we have to go by constitutional democracy which we are operating then we should be bound by precedence and the precedence suggests that you cannot go to the issue of tenure without first determining if there was a valid return.

Given your experiences do you believe you will get this justice?

To presume otherwise would be to ask the question how did we get to this situation where we had the re-run election of January. It was the Court of Appeal in Benin that agreed with us that there was no election in Delta State in April 2007 and declared that the tenure of Uduaghan for 3½ years was illegal.

That court has already declared 3½ years illegal! In our own view and from the facts what Uduaghan simply did was to continue in his illegality for another six months. But it is not the duty of the constitution of Nigeria or that of the courts of our country to say that because a tenure has been spent illegally that the tenure has expired.

No. it is only when that tenure is validly occupied that you can say so or when there is no challenge of the tenure during that occupation. That is when you can say so.

But there was a valid challenge to the tenure while he was there, it is only a procedural issue and that does not at all amount to him having occupied a valid or a lawful tenure and it is only when the issue of who was validly returned is determined that we can start to go to step two.

I think the Court of Appeal in Benin frankly did not do a proper job the way we expected men of their caliber to do.

Well, that is this time around?

Well this time around there are different set of Judges and different considerations. It may seem that judgment is more political than legal. Legally, it doesn’t hold any water at all. Politically, I think that it is very capable of creating the very issue that we are trying to avert which is to create instability. I think that that kind of judgment is enough to make people into taking stupid decisions and that is why we are very upset with that judgment.

We have tried to put ourselves in the position of following due process, complying with what the constitution of Nigeria says and what the electoral Act says but we are being told that having complied with all the steps prescribed by the Constitution and the Electoral Act that we have erred. I don’t see how complying with the laws of our country can make you err.

At what point will you give up and say I am tired, I have fought a good fight?

We cannot be tired because of the process, we must exhaust the possibilities. The question of being tired is out of the question and right now we are pursuing this case to the Supreme Court and we are also challenging the return of the 26th of April.

It is not our intention to say that we are tired, we will do what we have to do. It is a process. It is one thing to start a race and not to complete it. The race started from when we were nominated it ends when the final court gives its decision and that is how we see it and that is what we intend to do.

So, what is your assessment of the situation in your state?

There is an eerie calm in the state, people are very unhappy, they see it as the function of a cabal outside the state trying to emasculate the right of the people of Delta State by undue interference by taking extra-judicial measures to vanquish their franchise which they have freely given. I think they are not happy at all. They are not happy at all.

You refer to a cabal outside the state? Who are the members of this cabal?

If you have been following the electronic media, especially Saharareporters you would have seen names being bandied that are creating turbulence in the state because of their personal interests which override that of our state and most of them are not indigenes of our state and they find a willing lackey in a man who was not elected by the people.

Delta State is a cash cow where they come and bleed and that is what is causing all these problems.

A final word

Everything I have said so far is directed at making our supporters understand what the issues are and how we feel about them and what actions we are taking. In a nut shell we are telling them, keep hope alive we have to keep on doing what we are doing until we are proved right or otherwise.