Prominent Politician ordered DSS to influence judgments of election tribunals, says PDP

National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh

The national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party has accused the Department of State Services of “hijacking” election petition tribunals.

It said the security outfit had been asked to influence the outcome of the governorship election petitions currently ongoing before tribunals in some states.

National Publicity Secretary of the party, Chief Olisa Metuh, made the allegation at a hurriedly convened press conference in Abuja on Saturday evening.

Metuh said he had it on “good authority that ” a prominent politician from one of the affected states met with the DSS where he claimed the directive that the judgments be influenced was given.

He alleged that the DSS had summoned the election petitions tribunal judges in order to allegedly give the direction their judgments should go.

He added, “The DSS has summoned tribunal judges to dictate what the judgments of the tribunal be.

“Yesterday, one of the ministerial nominees insisted that they (the DSS) should summon the tribunal judges to influence the judgement of his state.

“We have it on good authority that the DSS has interfered by summoning the tribunal members in some states, especially PDP controlled states like Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Abia and others.

“We want to inform the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, on what is happening. We want to say that the judiciary is not an arm of another arm of government.”

Metuh insisted that the allegation was true and challenged the DSS to be bold enough to deny his allegation.