Atiku Abubakar, the former vice president; Aminu Tambuwal, the governor of Sokoto, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have all been sued by Nyesom Wike, the governor of Rivers state, for the handling of the PDP primary election.
Atiku was sought to be removed from INEC’s “list of candidates in the 2023 presidential election” by Wike and Newgent Ekamon, a PDP leader.
After Tambuwal resigned in favour of the former vice president and urged his supporters to vote for him, Wike lost the party’s presidential nomination to Atiku in May.
At that election, Wike received 237 votes to finish second behind the former vice president, who received 371 votes to become the PDP’s standard bearer.
The outcome of the primary election led to a crisis within the party.
In a suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/782/2022, Wike and Ekamon, plaintiffs, asked a federal high court in Abuja to determine if the transfer of Tambuwal’s votes to Atiku is legal.
They asked the court to declare that the PDP was wrong to assign Tambuwal’s votes to the former vice-president.
The plaintiffs asked the court to direct “the first respondent (PDP) to declare the second applicant (Wike), a presidential aspirant in the May 28 and May 29 primary as the winner of the aforesaid primary with a corresponding order directing the first respondent (PDP) to forward his name as the candidate to contest the presidential election in 2023”.
Meanwhile, frontline social crusader and legal luminary, Mr Femi Falana, has said that all public office holders with health challenges should be treated in government-owned hospitals.
Falana made the call at the first anniversary of the late Mohammed Fawehinmi Lecture and Book Presentation in Lagos on Thursday, August 11.
The late Mohammed Fawehinmi, the eldest son of the legal icon and human rights activist, Gani Fawehinmi, died on Aug. 11, 2021, at age 52.
He advocated for a law barring all public office holders from traveling out of the country on health grounds.
“Enough of health tourism. Anybody who holds public office must be treated in Nigeria for any health challenge. Public office holders must die here,” Falana said.
The legal luminary commended Vice President Yemi Osinbajo for undergoing knee surgery in one of the hospitals in the country and called on the government to pay more attention to developing the health sector.
Speaking on the theme: “Nigerian Masses And The Election”, Falana said that the business of the 2023 general election should not be taken as a joke.
He advised the people to challenge their various candidates on salient issues, noting that the 2023 general election was beyond religion and ethnicity.
