It isn’t but uhuru for Olumide Akpata, the governorship candidate of the Labour Get together(LP) within the forthcoming September 21 governorship election in Edo State as a former governorship aspirant of the social gathering, Barrister Kenneth Imansuangbon, has dragged him, the LP and Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee (INEC) earlier than the Courtroom of Enchantment.
Dissatisfied with the selections by Justice Babatunde Quadri of the Federal Excessive Courtroom in Benin Metropolis and Justice Obiora Egwuatu of the Federal Excessive Courtroom in Abuja, which all dismissed his functions on July 15 and 22, 2024, respectively, over Akpata’s candidacy, he has subsequently headed to the appellate courtroom.
Within the discover earlier than the Appellate Courtroom, Abuja Division, with go well with no: FHC/ABJ/CS/472/2024, Imansuangbon acknowledged that, “the discovered trial decide erred in regulation and arrived at a perverse choice occasioning a miscarriage of justice to the plaintiff/appellant when he dismissed the plaintiff/appellant’s go well with on the energy of the first defendant/respondent’s competition in his preliminary objection on the decrease courtroom.
“That the go well with was statue barred, with out contemplating Part 285(13A) of the Structure of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999(fifth alteration) act, (No. 10), 2023, to which the eye of the decrease courtroom was drawn on the listening to of the go well with.”
Particulars of the bottom being that “the discovered trial decide discovered as a truth in his choice that the letter forwarding the non-public particulars of the first and 2nd defendants/respondents as in INEC Type EC9 to 4th defendant/respondent(the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee) was obtained by the 4th defendant/respondent on the twenty fourth of March, 2024.”
Additionally, that “the discovered trial decide additional discovered as a incontrovertible fact that the graduation date of computation thereof, of time allowed for filling of pre-election issues within the circumstance, was the twenty fourth of March, 2024.
“A easy arithmetical computation of the 14 days offered for below the regulation, from the date of submission of the stated INEC Type EC9 of the first and 2nd defendants/respondents(that’s twenty fourth of March, 2024), to the twelfth of April, 2024, when the plaintiff/appellant filed his go well with, reveals a complete variety of 18 days in between.”
Imansuangbon is looking for for an order permitting the attraction; an order setting apart the choice of the decrease courtroom; an order directing the third defendant/respondent to right away challenge certificates of return to the plaintiff/appellant as winner of the first election organized on Friday, twenty third February, 2024.
Additionally difficult the ruling by the Federal Excessive Courtroom, Benin Metropolis, within the discover of attraction with go well with no: FHC/ABJ/CS/472/2024, Imansuangbon set his attraction on 9 grounds which embody that “the discovered trial decide erred in regulation when he failed, refused and or uncared for to think about, pronounce upon, determine, come what may, the first defendant’s movement/software for extension of time to file his responsive processes to the originating summons which the plaintiff/appellant ferociously or vehemently opposed on the energy of the constitutional provision prohibiting extension of time in election associated circumstances and thereby breached the plaintiff/appellant’s proper to truthful listening to.”
Imansuagbon on floor two, acknowledged that “the discovered trial decide erred in regulation and thus occasioned a miscarriage of justice on the plaintiff/appellant.”
On the third floor he asserted that the trial decide misdirected himself when he held that “the plaintiff has argued that since each pre-election matter should be crammed not later than 14 days from the date of the incidence of the occasion, choice or motion complained of within the go well with that an aggrieved aspirant needn’t wait to exhaust the interior dispute decision mechanism of the second defendant.”
The reliefs that Imansuangbon sought included an order permitting the attraction; an order setting apart the choice of the decrease courtroom; an order hanging out all of the processes filed by the first defendant on the trial courtroom; an order directing the 2nd defendant to right away challenge a certificates of return to the plaintiff because the winner of the first election organized on Friday, twenty third February, 2024 and an order directing, commanding or in any other case mandating the 2nd defendant to submit, ahead or in any other case transmit the plaintiff’s identify to the third defendant as winner of the first election.
In his ruling, Justice Quadri had declared that the lawsuit was untimely and with out substantial proof to help its claims. The Courtroom, subsequently, upheld Olumide Akpata’s place because the LP gubernatorial candidate for the upcoming election.
