IN reaction to last week’s tribunal judgments in Abia State which all went to PDP, hundreds of protesters under the aegis of “coalition of pressure groups” staged peaceful protests in Umuahia, weekend, to reject the outcome of the various petitions filed against the PDP candidates in the National Assembly elections of March 2015. The bulk of the petitions were filed by candidates of All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA.

The placard-carrying protesters, who chanted solidarity songs, trooped to the Abia State secretariat of APGA on Ikot Ekpene road in Umuahia to register their displeasure. To ensure that the process was not hijacked by miscreants, anti-riot policemen were on the side of the road watching what was going on. Some of the placards bore the inscriptions, ‘APGA leaders, can you recover our mandate?’ ‘We need justice at the election tribunal,’  ‘Tribunal judgments are unfair,” among others.

Led by one Chukwuemeka Mba, the groups warned that there was a limit to human endurance to “injustice and subversion of truth,” saying that with what has happened at the National Assembly tribunal, they are afraid that APGA has surrendered their mandate to election mandate robbers. According to Chukwuemeka Mba, the groups decided to embark on the protest  as “the change we need here in Abia” was not being realized because of the verdicts coming out of the tribunal.

“The verdict of the NASS Election Petition Tribunal that gave legal stamp to incontrovertible fictitious results has justified our fears,” Mba said. He further pointed out that they have been gripped with “apprehension” because of fears that the remaining petitions might not favour the opposition.

Addressing the protesters, the state chairman of APGA, Rev. Augustine Ehiemere commended the protesters for conducting themselves in a peaceful manner and assured that the party leadership would not rest on its oars until the “lost mandates” were recovered.

“I want to let you know that we are keeping in touch with both the judicial and political leaders at the highest level to ensure that those who are part of the criminal connivance to sell justice to the highest bidder  are made to bear the consequences,” Ehiemere said.

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