Worried by the fate of six elected Plateau State House of Assembly members still in limbo due to their non-swearing in by the Speaker of the State Assembly, Hon. Gabriel Dewan, seven months after they were affirmed by the Court of Appeal, a group christened Plateau Concerned APC Youths has described the continued delay as undemocratic and unconstitutional.
Recall that 16 of them affirmed by the Court of Appeal Election Petition Tribunal were initially left in the cold by the House, and ten were later sworn in piecemeal, leaving six in limbo seven months after the court judgement.
Addressing newsmen on Friday, the Coordinator, Plateau APC Concerned Youths, Hon. Gwalson Mutshak, expressed surprise that the People’s Democratic Party-led government in the state and the Speaker could call the bluff of an important institution like the judiciary without sanction from any quarters.
Hon. Mutshak stated that it beats quite a lot of people’s imagination that an elected institution could openly disrespect the electoral process and the Constitution by refusing to accept the verdict of the election petition tribunal.
He alleged that a case in point was the situation where the Governor, in concert with the Speaker, who incidentally is from a minority party, made it mandatory that for the 16 APC members to be sworn in, they must first of all write an undated letter of resignation with an affidavit stating that the decision to do so was voluntary.
According to him, the action was not only autocratic and unheard of, but it defied all sense of responsibility, democratic norms, and political decency.
“As things stand out now, six members of the APC who have refused to be coarsed into that unwholesome condition of signing their resignation letters as a precondition for their swearing in are still denied and refused to be sworn in by the Speaker of the Plateau State House of Assembly.”
He highlighted that this has deprived six constituencies of voices in the legislature for nearly seven months since they won their cases at the election petition tribunals.
Mutshak stated that this singular act has been creating tension and anxiety, to the extent that the patience of most people, especially the people of the six affected constituencies and those of the APC supporters, is fast running out, coupled with the kind of provocative innuendoes perpetrated by the Plateau State government.
The coordinator, who said APC in the state has become a political orphan and object of stricture by the PDP in the state on the premise that the party has not been getting anything from the centre, added that this is further compounded by the fact that APC supporters are denied even palliatives and other forms of social interventions sent to the state by the federal government.
Hon. Mutshak therefore appeals to Mr. President to appoint a minister from Plateau State and allow the state to have representation at the Federal Executive Council.
“Mr. President should save us from further embarrassment and ridicule by the PDP supporters, who constantly delight in making caricatures of the Muslim-Muslim ticket.”
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