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The pervading tension in Enugu over the long overdue ruling on the governorship electoral appeal reached a frightening dimension on Tuesday, when the judges failed to turn up at the Enugu Appeal Court, venue of the sittings.
The pervading tension in Enugu over the long overdue ruling on the governorship electoral appeal reached a frightening dimension on Tuesday, when the judges failed to turn up at the Enugu Appeal Court, venue of the sittings.
Thousands of people, both of government and opposition sides, thronged the Enugu Appeal Court premises full of expectations, but were seen to be highly disappointed, angry and worried as it dawned on them that the long wait for the final verdict had taken another turn.
One of the politicians, who spoke, wondered why the absence of just the chairman of the appeal tribunal can cause others not to read their judgment, when just two judges were known to have read the verdicts of Bayelsa and other states.
Corroborating him, Executive Director of Coalition for Consolidation of Democracy (CCD), Dr. Anthony Nwagu, the man who had on Monday raised the initial alarm of possible wheeling and dealing over the appeal ruling, declared that he had been vindicated.
He said 'the chairman taking ill was not enough to cause a shift after judgment notices had been dispatched one week before today.
He said he was sure that some games were up in the entire appeal as he speculated a few days ago.
He further said he was afraid the long and hard worn image of uprightness, activism and courage of the judiciary in the last one year might be muddled and drowned in 'this sought of back and forth behaviour of the appeal tribunal in Enugu."
Another pro-democracy activist, Mr. Obiekwe Nwako, of the South East Reforms Initiative (SERI), decried the development, saying he knew that Nigerian establishment had always treated matters affecting Ndigbo in ways that suggested disdain.
According to him, the Enugu appeal remained the longest and even after people had waited this long, he found it most displeasing that it had been shifted again, this time on what he called 'possible attempts at perverting justice and truncating democracy."
Some of the politicians who commented wondered why Governor Sullivan Chime would be so unsettled about a judgment which anybody who took interest in the whole cases knew would come.
One of the politicians who pleaded anonymity, argued that the governor knew that he had performed in at least the urban centres in the last one year and should not be afraid of the election which he knew was coming and for which he had boasted he would win convincingly.