Joseph Boakai Officially Declared Liberia’s New President

Joseph Boakai, the former Vice President of Liberia and Unity Party candidate, has been officially declared the winner of the 2023 presidential election. The announcement was made by Davidetta Lansannah, chairperson of Liberia’s National Election Commission (NEC) on Monday evening. After counting 100 percent of the votes from the country’s 5,890 polling places, Mr. Boakai secured 814,481 votes out of the available 1,625,684, surpassing incumbent President George Weah of the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change, who received 793,914 votes. Mr. Boakai’s vote share represented 50.64 percent of the total votes cast, while Mr. Weah received 49.36 percent. The first round of voting on October 10 did not produce a clear winner among the 20 presidential candidates, leading to a runoff between Weah and Boakai, the top two contenders. Unlike the first round, where a winner needed over 50 percent of the votes, a simple majority sufficed in the second round. Weah graciously accepted defeat and congratulated President-elect Boakai, urging his supporters to do the same when about 99 percent of the votes were counted. Foreign leaders, including Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, extended congratulations to Mr. Boakai, commending the statesmanship displayed by both candidates. The United States Government also praised Mr. Weah for peacefully accepting the outcome of the closely contested election, emphasizing the need for national unity and healing post-election divisions. The victory of Joseph Boakai as Liberia’s new president signifies a historic moment, fostering hopes for unity and progress in the nation’s governance and development.

Appeal Court Dismisses Uba, PDP’s Suit Against Gov Alia, Deputy

The Court of Appeal, Abuja division on Monday, dismissed an appeal instituted by the Governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Titus Uba, challenging the election of Hyacinth Alia as the elected Governor of Benue State. In a judgement delivered by the lead Justice, Onyekachi Aja Otisi dismissed the allegations of non qualifications made by Uba against the Deputy Governor, Samuel Ode. In a unanimous judgment, the Appallate Court held that the PDP gubernatorial candidate failed to establish forgery of INEC form EC9 by Ode beyond reasonable doubt as required by law. Among others, the Court of Appeal said that the issues of non qualifications are pre-election matters which can only be challenged at a Federal High Court and not at the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal as done by Uba. Also, Justice Otisi said that a suit to challenge non qualifications can only be instituted within 14 days of occurrence of the subject matter. The Court also dealt with the allegations by Uba that the name of the Governor, Hyacinth Alia was not not submitted by the All Progressives Congress APC to the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC within 180 days before the election of March 18. The Court held that the allegations can survive because the primary election that produce Alia was ordered by a High Court and was done within the period ordered by the court. In the final analysis, Justice Otisi held that the appeal of Uba against the judgment of Benue State Election Petition Tribunal delivered on September 23 lacked merit and was dismissed. The Court subsequently upheld the judgment of the Tribunal and rejected the plea of Uba to void it and set it aside.

Appeal Court Sacks APC Reps Member Ilyasu Kwankwaso, Affirms Datti As New Winner

The Court of Appeal, Abuja division, on Monday sacked Musa Ilyasu Kwankwaso of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In a ruling delivered on Monday, the appeal court affirmed and reinstated Yusuf Umar Datti of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) as the rightful winner of the Kura/Madobi/Garun Malam Federal Constituency Election. The three-man panel led by Justice Tunde Oyebamiji Awotoye allowed an appeal by Yusuf Datti. Delivering its judgment, Justice Awotoye held that the tribunal was wrong to have counted the date of the appellant’s resignation on the date of his party’s primary election and that Section 77 of the Electoral Act was misapplied, saying no court has jurisdiction on the issue of membership of the party, report added. Earlier, the Court of Appeal in Abuja affirmed Danjuma Goje’s victory as the senator representing the Gombe Central senatorial district. An appeal by the PDP candidate, Abubakar Aliyu, regarding the February 25 senatorial election was rejected by a three-member panel of judges at the appellate court. The Court of Appeal in Abuja has rendered a verdict in the case of the Kura/Madobi/Garun Malam Federal Constituency election in Kano State. The panel upheld the decision of the National and State House of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal in Gombe, which had previously dismissed Aliyu and the PDP’s petition against Goje and the APC.

Supreme Court Victory: Senate President Congratulates Tinubu

President of the Senate, Sen. Godswill Akpabio, has congratulated President Bola Tinubu on the reaffirmation of his victory by the Supreme Court describing the decision as reflective of the will of the people. Akpabio in a congratulatory message to Tinubu by Eseme Eyiboh, his Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, said the decision of the apex court was a welcome relief. He said the victory finally unfastens the last bolts to the path for social-political engineering that President Tinubu promised the nation. “Mr President, I am personally elated that the jurists of the Supreme Court saw through the arguments and even without much technicalities easily confirmed your victory in the poll. “There is no doubt that victory came at a cost, but Mr President, that makes it even sweeter. “I know you have in your years of public service yielded your personal and other comforts for the collective good and what it cost to confirm the victory in the courts should be seen with a similar vista,” he said. Akpabio also urged the president not to relent in being a father figure to his former rivals, saying that it is superfluous to remind the president of his well-known big heart. He also called on the major rivals of the president to sheath their swords of political combat and join hands with his administration in the collective goal of making the nation great again. “The elections have been announced by the electoral authorities and confirmed by the courts, and I call on all former political rivals of the president to show good faith by joining hands with the Bola Tinubu’s administration in its ongoing efforts to take the nation to a higher level,” he said. He said that the National Assembly would continue to support the Tinubu Administration by leveraging its legislative tentacles to raise the level of governance to a higher pedestal.

Appeal Court Sacks Senate Minority Leader, Mwadkwon, Orders Rerun

The Court of Appeal in Abuja, Sunday, nullified the election of the Senate Minority Leader, Simon Mwadkwon, in the February 25 senatorial election in the Plateau North Senatorial District. A three-member appeal panel ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to, within 90 days, conduct a fresh election in the senatorial district. This is a ruling on the appeal filed by Mr Chris Giwa of the All Progressives Congress and Mr Gyang Zi of the Labour Party. Giwa and Zi had appealed against the judgment of the election petitions tribunal in Jos, Plateau State which, affirmed Mwadkwon of the Peoples Democratic Party as the winner of the senatorial poll. The appellants had contended that Mwadkwon was not qualified to stand for an election as his party, the PDP, which nominated him during the election, had no structure to do so, having not complied with an earlier high court order for the party to conduct a proper state congress. Justice E. Daudu, who read the lead judgment of the appellate court, held that the high court order was not fully complied with by the PDP as 12 LGAs didn’t participate in the said congress. “The court made total findings with regard to the issue in focus.  “To avoid anarchy, I agree with the appellants that the court must protect an order of another court. “I agree with the appellant that the third respondent had no valid structure and could not have claimed to have validly nominated the second respondent (Mwadkwon) for the election.  “Given the findings of this court, the appeal, therefore, succeeds as the court order was not complied with. “The first respondent is hereby ordered to conduct another senatorial election in Plateau North within 90 days,” the judge ruled.  

Kevin McCarthy Removed As House Speaker In Historic Vote

 House Speaker Kevin MacCarthy has been ousted from his leadership position in a historic vote on Tuesday after a far-right revolt over his reliance on Democrats to pass funding to avert a government shutdown. The final vote was 216-210, with eight Republicans joining all the Democrats to vote to remove McCarthy. It’s the first time a House speaker has been removed in a no-confidence vote. “The office of speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant,” said Republican Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, who was presiding over the chamber.  Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a top ally of McCarthy’s and a member of the Financial Services Committee, was then appointed speaker pro tempore. The rules of the 11th Congress state that “in the case of a vacancy in the office of speaker, the next member” named on a list submitted by McCarthy to the clerk of the House in January will become speaker pro tempore until a speaker is elected.  House Republicans met Tuesday night as a conference to discuss their next steps. McCarthy told his colleagues he would not run for speaker again.   “The reason Kevin McCarthy went down today is because nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told reporters after the vote. “Kevin McCarthy has made multiple contradictory promises, and when they all came due, he lost votes of people who maybe don’t even ideologically agree with me on everything.”  “This represents the ripping off of the Band-Aid and that’s what we need to do to get back on track,” the Florida Republican added. Along with Gaetz, seven Republican members voted to oust McCarthy: Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana. A day earlier, Gaetz accused McCarthy of making a “secret side deal” with President Biden on Ukraine aid to get a short-term funding bill passed hours before the government was set to shutdown. The California Republican denied having made any deal in exchange for Democratic votes. Eleven Republicans voted against the earlier motion to table Gaetz’s resolution, an ominous sign of what was to come for McCarthy.  The speaker of the House is not only the leader of the chamber but also second in line for the presidency. Ousting a sitting speaker by vote in the middle of a congressional term is unprecedented in American history, and McCarthy’s allies warned that doing so would set a precedent that would hang over every speaker moving forward. That argument did not persuade Democrats to come to McCarthy’s rescue. “We’re in uncharted territory. We’ve never had this situation before,” Matthew Green, a politics professor at Catholic University, told CBS News. Green said the vote shows the Republican Party has “too many members who don’t like McCarthy personally or otherwise are disdainful of party norms.” “There was a norm that you don’t do this. This rule has been on the books more or less continuously since 1910,” Green said. “You’ve got a party that’s very small and you’ve got a faction of members who are disdainful of these norms, and that makes it extremely difficult to govern.” Democratic leadership members had urged their caucus to vote “yes” on the motion to vacate.  “Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote to his caucus.  Up until the vote, McCarthy had expressed confidence to reporters that he would prevail. “I’m an optimist because I think there’s no point in being anything else,” McCarthy said.  

NNPP makes U-turn, denies suspending Kwankwaso

The National Working Committee (NWC) of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) has refuted the purported suspension of Sen. Rabiu Kwankwaso, the 2023 Presidential Candidate from the party.Mr Ladipo Johnson, the NNPP National Auditor, stated this at a news conference on Wednesday the party’s National Headquarters in Abuja.Johnson, a former spokesperson for Kwankwanso Presidential Campaign Council, said that the suspension was null and void.A faction of the party headed by a former Board of Trustees (BoT) Chairman, Mr Boniface Aniebonan had on Tuesday suspended Kwankwaso for six months over alleged anti-party activities, after a parallel National Executive Committee (NEC) in Lagos.It also appointed the former National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mr Major Agbo as the acting National Chairman.But, Johnson said that Aniebonam and Agbo were on August 24 suspended for three months for engaging in unwholesome acts before they were later expelled from the party.He added that the party NEC, at its meeting on Tuesday in Abuja which was monitored by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), took certain decisions including the election of new national officials, change of the party logo and expulsion of Aniebonam and Agbo.“Is it not funny that all those people either suspended or expelled would gather somewhere and claim to have suspended Kwankwaso and also dissolve the NWC? “The jokers also appointed a CTC made up of those people who have ceased to be members of the party by virtue of our constitution. “Was INEC at the meeting? Did they write INEC? Who and who signed the letter? “Is it not laughable that Major Agbo, who announced the suspension of the former chairmen, the expulsion of two of them, and the dissolution of some of the states is now purportedly “heading” their caretaker committee,” Johnson said. He said it was unfortunate that some people had reduced politics and party administration to huge jokes. “The news that one person will sit somewhere and arrogate certain powers to himself is not permissible in a democracy. “We are using this medium to assure our supporters all over the country that there is no substance in the story. “Kwankwaso remains the face of the party, has not been suspended, and the NWC under Ali remains intact,’’ he said.Johnson however, admitted that Kwankwaso was invited to meetings by President Bola Tinubu on some issues saying that the meetings were far from being anti-party activities. He said that while Kwankwaso always took permission before attending such meetings, no conclusion had so far been reached from the meetings. He also denied the allegation that Kwankwaso hijacked the party from members who were in the party before he joined with his movement in February 2022. Johnson, however, said that the party leadership would do its best for possible reconciliation. Also speaking, Mr Oluwatosin Odeyemi, the Chairman, forum of NNPP state chairmen, said the purported suspension of Kwankwaso was politics of bitterness. “Let me remind you that the present secretary of that group was expelled from this party and Agbo was the one who read it out that he had been expelled. Agbo attended all the meetings of that committee. “So, you can see that it’s politics of bitterness. Something you read is something you agreed with. It was not as if you were pressure to read a release as the national publicity secretary. “So now an expelled person that you confirm his explosion is whom you are now regarding so as yours, secretary,’’ Odeyemi said.