BEVERLY HILLS, April 12, (THEWILL) – The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeals of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State and its factional governorship candidate, Tonye Cole.
The verdict followed a suit filed at the Rivers State High Court in Port Harcourt by Ibrahim Umah and 22 others against the APC, wherein Justice Chinwendu Nwogu restrained the congresses.
Despite the court’s order two parallel primaries were held in Rivers State with Magnus Abe and Tonye Cole emerging from both direct and indirect primaries conducted in the state. The Cole faction is loyal to the Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.
In its ruling, a seven-member panel of justices presided by the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Tanko Muhammad, ruled that two of the appeals are defective and lacks merit.
It also held that being pre-election matters, they ought to have been brought in accordance with the rules of the court adding that “no reliefs were sought from the Supreme Court.”
The court also ruled that the citations made by counsel to APC, Jibrin Okutepa (SAN) is inapplicable to the case and struck it out while it upheld the submission of counsel to the PDP, Emmanuel Ukala (SAN) that reliefs brought to the Supreme Court were directed at the Court of Appeal in the motion papers.
Okutepa, who earlier requested the apex court to invoke its powers under Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act to set aside the judgment of the Rivers State High Court, which nullified the primaries of the APC, however withdrew the third appeal filed on March 23, 2019.
The court said rather than the heading of the appeals to read “Reliefs sought from the Supreme Court,” it was wrongly headed “Reliefs sought from the Court of Appeal.”
Muhammad said the implication of the error was that the appellant did not seek any relief from the apex court, and thereby contravened the court’s rules, and rendering the appeal incompetent.
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