The Supreme Court has struck out the appeals lodged by the All Progressives Congress (APC), its governorship candidate, Tonye Patrick Cole, and members of his faction of the party, against the judgment that barred the party from fielding candidates in the last elections in Rivers State.
A seven-man panel of the apex court, led by the acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, held that the three appeals were defective, incompetent and could not be heard by the court.
The appeals are: SC/295/2019, filed by APC, with People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) listed among respondents; SC/266/2019 filed by APC, with Magnus Abe and others as respondents and SC/267/2019, filed by Tonye Patrick Cole, with Magnus Abe and others as respondents.
Justice Muhammad, in the first ruling delivered on SC/295/2019, upheld that argument by PDP’s lawyer, Emmanuel Ukala (SAN), to the effect that the notice of appeal filed by the APC was defective.
The judge observed that the heading on the notice of appeals, entitled: “Reliefs sought from the Court of Appeal,” instead of reliefs sought from the Court of Appeal, was wrongly headed.
He said the implication of that error was that the appellant did not seek any relief from the Supreme Court, and, thereby, contravened the court’s rules, a development that rendered the appeal incompetent.
The same errors were noticed in the other two appeals, which made the appellants’ lawyers, Jibrin Okutepa (SAN) and Tuduru Ede to withdraw both appeals, following which the court struck them out.
In the notices of appeal, the two appellants had asked the Court of Appeal to make them participants in the general election in the state, instead of the Supreme Court.
APC, represented by its counsel, Jibril Okutepa, had prayed the seven-man panel of the Supreme Court to overrule its own decision, which had earlier upheld the restraining order that barred APC from participating in the general election.
Its grouse was that the restraining order from the High Court of Rivers State was obtained in a fraudulent manner.
However, counsel to the PDP, Emmanuel Ukala, had drawn the attention of the Supreme Court to the notice of appeal of APC, where the party erroneously prayed the Court of Appeal, instead of Supreme Court to grant its reliefs.
Okala, who cited several authorities, submitted that the APC had not asked for anything from the Supreme Court, and, therefore, the notice of appeal is incompetent in law, and urged the apex court to strike out or dismiss same.
In its ruling, delivered by the CJN, Ibrahim Tanko Mohammad, the court agreed that the notice of appeal by APC was incurably defective and grossly incompetent.
Justice Mohammad, therefore, struck out the notice of appeal and dismissed it for being incompetent.
In the second appeal filed by Tonye Cole, through his counsel, Tuduru Eteh, the notice of appeal was wrongly addressed to the court of appeal.
In the reliefs being sought, that the Supreme Court should officially declare him as APC governorship candidate for the 2019 election.
This promptly made the counsel to withdraw the incompetent notice of appeal and which was subsequently struck out by the acting CJN.
With the latest decisions of the Supreme Court, all legal issues or court actions concerning Rivers State APC, in relation to the general election, have been laid to rest.
In the third appeal between APC and Senator Magnus Abe, the court struck out the notice of appeal on the same ground that it was incompetent having been addressed to the Court of Appeal, instead of the Supreme Court. – The Sun.
