Residents of Kogi Central have condemned Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan for securing a court injunction preventing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from accepting a recall petition against her.
According to the constituents, the legal move reflects her acknowledgment that “she is as good as gone.”
The residents, drawn from the five local government areas in the district, argued that questionable intentions often lead to irreversible mistakes.
“This is exactly the case with Mrs. Akpoti-Uduaghan, even in the way her court injunction was framed,” they said.
In a statement issued on Friday by the Kogi Central Renaissance Assembly, the constituents accused the senator of acting out of desperation by dismissing the recall signatures as fictitious—a claim they believe should have been left for INEC to verify during the recall process.
“It is laughable that the same person who has called the recall process a sham is the same person that has gone to tell the court to restrain the electoral umpire from receiving or acting on the petition, even when she says the signatures are fictitious.
“We understand your plight. This is last-minute desperation to save yourself the embarrassment of a recall. But we, Constituents of Kogi Central, insist that you have already embarrassed both yourself and the District, and home you shall come.
“The courts are for everybody. You can’t force yourself on us. Even you should know that this your course of action is dead on arrival,” the statement, signed by the Coordinator, KCRA, Adeku Joshua; and Secretary, Maleek Sule, said.
The Kogi Central indigenes insisted that they would follow the recall process through in order to redeem their image, the image of the state and that of Nigeria at large.
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“We, Ebiras, are not enablers of blackmail and unruly behaviour. We stand by this recall and will see it through. The world should know that we are people of integrity. Enough of embarrassing the entire country on the world stage over ridiculous allegations backed by no evidence,” they declared.
A Federal High Court sitting in Lokoja, Kogi State had, on Friday, granted an interim injunction restraining INEC, its staff, or agents from receiving, accepting, or acting on any petition containing what the Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan called “fictitious signatures of purported members of the Kogi Central Senatorial District.”
