The Chairman of Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Christopher Maikalangu, has reacted strongly to the judgment of the FCT Election Tribunal which sacked him from office on Friday, while indicating that he will appeal the verdict.
He alleged that the tribunal manipulated and manufactured ghost votes against the ones that were legitimately announced after the February 12th elections for the APC, an action he described as an embarrassment to the Nigerian Judiciary.
Maikalangu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was declared winner of Feb. 12 AMAC chairmanship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC). He polled 19,302 votes to defeat Murtala Karshi, of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), who scored 13,240 votes.
However, the election tribunal, sitting in Abuja on Friday, had granted over 21,000 votes to the candidate of APC, boosting his ballots’ tally in the election above that of his PDP counterpart. But in a statement issued in Abuja, the AMAC Chairman renounced the judgment passed in favour of the APC. The statement was jointly signed by his Chief Press Secretary and Senior Special Assistant on Media, Ephraim Audu and Kingsley Madaki.
Madaki added that the judgment appeared to be completely biased and against the will of the people, who came out en masse in the AMAC chairmanship election on February 12 to vote for the candidate of their choice.
He said: “The judgment of today is completely unacceptable. We cannot call that a judgment, because it was one-sided, with a clear picture of being manipulated. We cannot allow such judgment to stand, because there was no clear basis for such a judgment to be given in the first place.
“The present Chairman of AMAC, Hon. Christopher Maikalangu, had a landslide victory during the election with wide margins. So, I wonder where the Judge got his record from that Murtala Karshi won the election. The tribunal judgment is a farce to the Judiciary, which the common people depend on. There is no way such a judgment should be allowed to stand, because it completely subverted the will of the people, which they exhibited by voting for their chosen candidate during the FCT Area Council election”.
“So, I am appealing to residents of AMAC and PDP supporters to stay calm and pray, because it is only God that gives power; and by the grace of God, we will appeal the judgment and get the justice we deserve”, he said.
