By Shittu Bamaiyi
The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC,will tomorrow Tuesday, 15th of August, try to show proof that Caleb Mutfwang of the PDP won the March 18th governorship election in Plateau State.
Expectedly, INEC is to enter defence having kaleidoscopically failed to do so on two occasions.
On the last adjourned date, the electoral body told the tribunal that it was finding it difficult to assemble it's witnesses based on the fact that, some of the staff that conducted the election were transferred out of Jos.
INEC'S conundrum will be, the overwhelming, well grounded and substantiated complaints of electoral fraud perpetrated by PDP in connivance with some staff of INEC, as elaborately claimed by the petitioner, Nentawe Yilwatda, the APC governorship candidate in the March 18th election.
As reliably gathered during the closed -door meeting between the parties and members of the tribunal on the last adjourned date, INEC reluctantly disclosed that it would only bring two witnesses for its defence which from all indications would both be taken tomorrow.
Immediately INEC rounds up its defence, Caleb Mutfwang as the second respondent, will take the centre stage and show cause why he should continue to enjoy the rights,privileges and paraphernalia of office as the governor of Plateau state.
For sure, governor Mutfwang would be going against the wild,whirl wind ignited and fanned by Nentawe in a bid to take over as the rightful winner of the March,18th election in the state.
As a matter of fact, governor Mutfwang has a herculean task on convincing the tribunal that he freely and transparently won the election, if the three grounds of the petition are anything to go by.
The third respondent in the petition, which is the PDP, is already in an awkward and disadvantaged position as a result of the plethora of court judgements against its purported leadership in the state.
Ground one of the petition which challenges the sponsorship of the governor, seems to be the centrifugal force that would either keep or send Mutfwang out of the government House.
Jurisprudentially, it is well established that the PDP lacks credible leadership in the state, and as such could not have legally sponsored any candidate for any political office in the 2023 general election as far as the Electoral Act 2022 as ammended, was concerned.
With the well established judicial precedents and also the probative values of Emmanuel Go'ar's evidence and that of his name sake , Emmanuel Macham, it remains to be seen how PDP would convince the tribunal that it was on track legally, when it sponsored it candidates for the 2023 general elections.
Certainly the tribunal this week would be full of thriller as the petitioner's lawyers would take their pound of flesh out of the respondents witnesses.
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