HURIWA urges Oyetola, Edeoga, Nweke to stop legal, verbal wars

HURIWA urges Oyetola, Edeoga, Nweke to stop legal, verbal wars

Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), has asked the candidates who lost in the March 18 governorship election in Enugu State to stop legal and verbal wars.

It also charged them to support the governor-elect, Peter Mbah, who was duly elected and declared the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

HURIWA in a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, in the same vein, urged the former Governor of Osun State, Gboyega Oyetola, to sheathe his legal swords and embrace Senator Ademola Adeleke as the duly elected governor of Osun State as ruled by the Appeal Court in Abuja on Friday.

In last Saturday’s poll, Peter Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) polled 160,895 votes slightly above his closest rivals, Chijioke Edeoga of the Labour Party (LP) who scored 157,552.

Meanwhile, Frank Nweke (Jr) of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) scored 17,983 votes while Uche Nnaji of the All Progressives Congress (APC) got 14,575 votes.

Nweke, Edeoga and Nnaji have since faulted the emergence of Mbah as Enugu Gov-Elect and threatened to challenge the victory of the PDP candidate in court.

However, HURIWA’s Onwubiko stated that “while it is within the constitutional rights of Chijioke Edeoga, Frank Nweke (Jr) to go to court, we urge them to sheathe their swords, give peace a chance and support the young governor to settle down to work because the election met all thresholds of transparency, accountability, competitiveness and credibility.”

Adding: “Any litigation at this time is a pure distraction and detrimental to delivering good governance to the people of Enugu State.

“Similarly, former governor Gboyega Oyetola should stop his legal voyage of discovery and let Governor Ademola Adeleke concentrate to deliver good governance to the good people of Osun State. After all, the office is sacrificial and is meant to deliver social, economic, sustainable development and aggressive industrialization to Osun and create an enabling environment for economic growth.

“He needs to know that the decision of the Court of Appeal was an indication that his legal action was frivolous, vexations, and it is a total distraction”, Onwubiko said.