National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole has said it was undemocratic for courts to award electoral victories.
According to him, said victory should be based on the result of polls, and where there’s a snag, re-run should be ordered.
Oshiomhole insisted that the award of electoral victories and imposition of officers on the people would destroy the country’s democracy.
For him therefore, nothing should empower the courts to impose people on Nigerians.
Oshiomhole, who expressed his views on Tuesday while chatting with State House Correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said his party would push for an amendment of the Electoral Act.
His words: “The court should not impose. If the court finds out that the preferred candidate did not win, for me, the only democratic option, the legal option will be to repeat the exercise.
“Nothing should empower the court to impose a man rejected by the people on the people. That goes to the heart of democracy and it destroys the fabric of our democratic process.
“So, in amending the Electoral Act, one of the things I’ll like to see the Parliament do, and we are going to make a representation, is that in the unlikely event that the people have voted in good faith for a candidate that was validly put before them by INEC, if anybody has any issue with that one that the people prefer and has won, the court cannot impose the person that was rejected.
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“The very best the court can do is to order that the exercise be repeated because in a democracy, nobody, other than the people, can choose who governs them, not the courts.
“For me, this is fundamental when it comes to who actually won the election.”
On the Supreme Court’s refusal to reverse its judgment on the Imo State governorship election, the APC National Chairman said it was “not unexpected”.
“I think they are just being consistent with the position they took in previous cases.
“Of course, as a party chairman, APC members and indeed, all democrats and all those who believe in the rule of law, we believe that as imperfect as the Supreme Court can be, they remain supreme.
“We are happy and we thank God that the whole litigation process has come to an end,” he stated.
