A Federal High Court, Abuja, will on Friday, deliver judgment in a suit filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River.
The PDP, through its counsel Emmanuel Ukala, SAN, had filed the suit before Justice Taiwo Taiwo to seek for an order sacking the governor and his deputy over their defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC), among others.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Tuesday, gathered from Court 7, where Justice Taiwo presides that the judgment in the suit filed by the PDP against Cross River governor and his deputy will come up on Friday, March 25. NAN reports that Justice Taiwo had, on Monday, ordered two House of Representatives members representing Cross River and 18 lawmakers from the state’s House of Assembly to vacate their seats over their defection to the APC.
The judge gave the order following a suit filed on August 27th, 2021, by the PDP to challenge the 20 lawmakers’ defection to APC, alongside the governor on May 20, 2021.
He also dismissed other preliminary objections raised by the sacked lawmakers.
Justice Taiwo ruled that the argument of the lawmakers that there was rancour in the PDP which necessitated their defection to APC was a ploy to mislead the court.
The judge, who granted all the reliefs sought by the PDP, held that it was disheartening that politicians in the country treat citizens as if they do not matter once they get into office.“
A day must surely come when elected officials, must either resign from their office or ask the people who voted for them before defecting to other political parties, instead of defecting to another party without recourse to the law and the citizens, ” he said.
According to him, we cannot continue in sin and expect grace to abound.
(NAN)
