Youths from the 17 local councils of Plateau State on Wednesday called on the National Judicial Council (NJC) to review recent judgments that sacked some members of the National Assembly from the state.
Clusterchannel recalls that the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja recently sacked two senators and four members of the House of Representatives from Plateau State.
The court in its judgement cited lack of a valid structure in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the platform the legislators ran for the offices, as the basis for nullifying their elections.
While the appellate court ordered a rerun in the Plateau North Senatorial zone within 90 days, other affected lawmakers had their certificates of return withdrawn and issued to candidates of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Labour Party, LP.
During a peaceful protest in Jos, the state capital, on Wednesday, Mr Patrick Jatau, who spoke on behalf of the youths, described the recent judgments as a ”miscarriage of justice”.
Noting that the sacked legislators were dully elected by majority of the citizenry, he called on the NJC to take a second look on the merits of the cases.
”We are here as young men and women from the 17 local government areas of Plateau State to express our dissatisfaction with the recent judgements of the Court of Appeal over the cases in the state.
”We are not happy because the people we overwhelmingly voted, but have been sacked by the Court using technicalities.
”How can the mandate of someone who scored over 95,000 votes in an election be nullified by the court and declare the one who polled 35,000 votes as winner? He decried.
”So, we call on the NJC to review these judgments so as to restore these mandates to the original winners; those that the masses actually voted for,” he said.
Jatau particularly called on the NJC to use the Plateau judgments to redeem the deteriorating image of the judiciary in the country.
He insisted that the youths would mount major streets of Jos to conduct a peaceful protest until the judgements are reviewed.
