The Courtroom of Enchantment, Abuja division, on Friday, dismissed an attraction by the Edo State Peoples Democratic Social gathering governorship aspirants, Arthur Esene and Anselm Ojezua, in search of to disqualify the occasion’s candidate, Asue Ighodalo, from the forthcoming governorship election on twenty first September.
The appellants, in attraction quantity CA/ABJ/CV/863/2024, had requested the courtroom to overturn the April 17, 2024, judgment by Justice James Omotosho of the Federal Excessive Courtroom, Abuja, which dismissed their swimsuit for being statute-barred.
Within the lead judgment delivered by Justice Hamma Barka, the appellate courtroom upheld the choice of the trial courtroom.
The courtroom dominated that the swimsuit filed by Ojezua and 4 others on the Federal Excessive Courtroom was submitted out of time and was, subsequently, statute-barred.
Justice Barka concurred with the decrease courtroom’s ruling that Ojezua and his co-appellants didn’t show their declare that Ighodalo had cast his voter’s card.
Moreover, the courtroom dominated that their case lacked benefit, because it was based mostly on the flawed assumption that not having a voter’s card is enough grounds to disqualify a candidate from contesting an election.
The three-member panel of the appellate courtroom additionally famous that the appellants didn’t contest the trial courtroom’s discovering that Ighodalo had utilized to the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee for the switch of his voter registration from Lagos State to Edo State and that INEC had issued him a voter’s card.
Justice Barka subsequently struck out the attraction for lack of benefit and ordered the appellants to pay N3 million in prices to Ighodalo, the PDP, and INEC.
Justices Usman Musale and Okon Abang, who have been additionally on the panel, agreed with the lead judgment.
Particulars later…
