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David Mark hopeful of winning Idoma’s vote in planned re-run

By Editor
04 December 2015   |   4:30 am
STILL reeling from the Court of Appeal’s annulment of his election last Saturday, Senator David Mark Campaign Organization yesterday expressed the belief that the Idoma people will support his strong character to represent their cause in the Senate.
Senate-President-David-Mark1

David Mark

STILL reeling from the Court of Appeal’s annulment of his election last Saturday, Senator David Mark Campaign Organization yesterday expressed the belief that the Idoma people will support his strong character to represent their cause in the Senate.

A director in the campaign organisation, Dr. Adakole Elijah said his reaction was necessitated owing to claims by the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in the Benue South Senatorial District rerun election that the Idoma people are no longer in support of Mark’s ambition to represent them at the Senate.
Mark, immediate past Senate President is a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

However, Elijah while briefing journalists in Makurdi yesterday, said he would not join issues with the APC, even as he stressed that the Idoma, whom he said are not fools would continue to maintain their support for Mark in order to protect their destiny.
“We will not put our destiny and that of our children in the hands of a man who is an agent of external influences,” Elijah stated.

He faulted the judgment of the appellate court, particularly that which relied on the clerical error of the returning officer, who signed the result on 28 instead of 29 March, 2015, arguing “what the court needed to have done was to set aside the declaration and collation since the date does not invalidate election, if there was a clerical error, in so far as it does not change the result.”

He supported his argument with the judgment delivered by the president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, who said “election is like a pyramid, it grows from down to the top, you cannot stay at the top and quash any election that has properly taken place from the bottom, that election that has not been challenged at the polling unit, ward and local government cannot be nullified.”

Elijah said, “We are not afraid of anything, we want to point to Nigerians the lacuna, the world thing is curious for resurrecting a document whose ruling was not appealed against. We want the judgment to be published for the whole world to see.”

He described the denial by the state government through the Senior Special Adviser to the Governor on Media and ICT, Terver Akase that it did not allegedly interfere in the judgment of the court as a case of the owl crying in the night and the child dying in the morning.
“Why did the state government deny having hand in the judgment when it was not accused? We want to get the judgment and expose them,” Elijah further stated.

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