Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Supreme Court has struck out the appeal filed by Senator Magnus Abe bordering on the intra- party crisis over the primaries of the Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In a unanimous judgment by the acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed, the apex court dismissed the application seeking to amend the notice of appeal for lacking in merit.
The court also noted that the suit is incompetent and a gross violation of orders 2 rule 8 of the Supreme Court rules. It held that once a notice of appeal has been found defective, it cannot be amended.
Abe in his own appeal is asking the apex court to determine the authenticity or otherwise of the direct primary conducted by the APC in Rivers State for the nomination of its candidates for the 2019 general election. Abe, who is a factional leader of the Rivers APC, is praying the apex court to make a final pronouncement on the legality of both direct and indirect primary polls conducted by the two factions of the party last year.
The motion dated March 1, was predicated on eight grounds and affidavit of urgency among which is that the matter being a pre-election suit must by law be fully determined within 60 days.
A seven-man panel of justices of the apex court in striking out the appeal, held that the notice of appeal filed by the senator representing Rivers Southeast at the upper chamber of the legislature was defective and not in compliance with the rule of the court.
Muhammed held that the notice of appeal was defective because it did not contain the names and titles of parties in the matter. The panel, in a unanimous judgment delivered by the acting CJN, also held that the notice of appeal offended section 285 of the 1999 constitution since the amendment cannot be done to the notice of appeal in view of the fact that the 14 days required by law to file the appeal have expired.
At the resumed hearing Monday, counsel to the APC, Jibrin Okutekpa, objected to hearing of the appeal on the grounds that names of appropriate persons affected by the suit were not listed on the notice of appeal and thereby rendered the appeal incompetent and incurably defective.
Mohammad in the ruling upheld Okutekpa’s submissions and accordingly struck out the appeal on the grounds that it was defective.
The court rejected the plea by Abe’s lawyer, Henry Bello that the ommission committed by him should not be visited on his client, adding that the notice of appeal cannot be refiled because the 14 days allowed by law to do so, has expired.