The PDP said there was more than meet the eye in Oshiomhole’s remarks shortly after the judgement was declared that the tribunal’s verdict was not more than “Mama Akara judgement” with the party saying Oshiomhole had made a suggestive statement.
Edo State chairman of the PDP, Dan Orbih, who stated this while reacting to his party’s loss at the tribunal, said the statement credited to Oshiomhole cannot be taken on the face value and that the former governor has exposed the behind-the-scene process that led to the judgement.
He said, “I watched former Governor Adams Oshiomhole on national television describing Friday’s judgement as Mama Akara judgement. This is about the first time Oshiomhole will be describing things the way they are in his political life.
“We know what goes into the making of akara and we also know that the Mama Akara will not part with her akara for nothing. So, we are demanding from Oshiomhole to tell Edo people and indeed Nigerians what was handed the Mama Akara before she let go of her akara.”
Meanwhile, the Edo PDP has given reasons the party will not accept Friday’s judgement of the tribunal, pointing out that the tribunal threw away the results obtained from the inconclusive ballot recount and that the tribunal expected the party and its candidate to call on over 2,000 witnesses in 14 days among others.
Orbih in his post-mortem of the tribunal verdict told journalists at the weekend that the tribunal through its pronouncement was saying that different unit presiding officers could adopt different standards in conducting the same election and that the tribunal was saying that there was no need for uniformity in the conduct of elections.
He said: “Conduct of an election is not a fre-for-all exercise where anyone is at liberty to apply his own discretion. What Justice Badamasi was simply saying that whether the presiding officers followed the regulations or not did not matter.
“For the first time ever, a judge redefined over-voting as a situation whereby the total number of votes cast exceeds the total number of registered voters. Is that not laughable? I think these are the salient issues that we will challenge.”