MIFFED by its disqualification which rendered all proceedings in the last six months of sitting null and void and the subsequent re-composition, protesters yesterday took to the streets of Calabar demanding probe of the National/State Assemblies Election Petitions Tribunal for Cross River State and suspension of the President of the Court of Appeal.

The over 200 agitators, brandishing an empty coffin, green leaves and placards with different inscriptions, vented their grudge under the auspices of “Cross River State Diocese of Wesley Synod International African Foundation in Collaboration with College of Clergies in Politics, Cross River State Chapter.”

They asked the Federal Government to thoroughly investigate the tribunal for the “sham” and urged the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) to axe the President of the Court of Appeal for the embarrassment where a junior judge, Justice Awubra, was made to chair the panel for that length of time before the disqualification consequent upon a prayer made by Paul Erokoro, SAN, counsel to the PDP candidate, Senator Gershom Bassey whose election as representative of Cross River South Senatorial District in the upper chamber of the National Assembly was being challenged Senator Bassey Otu of the Labour Party (LP).

The leader of protesters and presiding Primate/Archbishop of Africa, Dr. Barthsy Ojoi Enebiene in a chat yesterday with newsmen in Calabar said: “A tribunal was set to hear the grievances of the aggrieved but only to discover that there is a political and judicial conspiracy against Cross River State. The political elements in Cross River are selfish. We are saying no to all these.

“The tribunal and those who constituted it know that a junior judge suppose not to sit as chairman over the senior. But we have a situation that only in Cross River State did that happen. It is a shame that the tribunal sat through for six months wasting the peoples’ resources and energy only to come to discover at the last day in their submission that they are incompetent. They discovered this only in two weeks and we are saying no to it and the injustice,” he fumed.

The cleric said the diocese “in pursuant of natural and democratic justice, protest against 2015 Election Petition Tribunal for National and State Assemblies sitting in Calabar (Panel 1) on grounds of abuse of democratic and judicial process; mutilation of justice and democratic system; incompetence, grave error, gross irresponsibility; political/legal conspiracy and compromise.

“We completely disagree and reject in totality all the crafty and wicked purported legal academic blunders perfected during their six-month sitting in Calabar. We therefore demand justice and cancellation of their illegalities,” Enebiene added.