THE Supreme Court has affirmed the June 18 judgment of the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which upheld the nomination of Governor Abiodun Oyebanji as the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for the June 20 governorship election in Ekiti State.
News Point Nigeria reports that a five-member panel of the apex court, in a unanimous judgment delivered on Friday, held that the appeal filed by an aggrieved APC governorship aspirant, Mrs. Abimbola Olawumi, lacked merit and consequently dismissed it.
In its judgment, the Supreme Court faulted the competence of the appeal filed by Mrs. Olawumi and held that the reliefs she sought could not be granted.
Mrs. Olawumi had challenged the process that led to Oyebanji’s nomination and urged the court to nullify the outcome of the APC governorship primary, alleging that she was unlawfully prevented from participating in the exercise as an aspirant.
Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Mohammed Idris upheld the objections raised against the competence of applications filed by the appellant on July 16 and July 23, which sought to regularise her notice of appeal and her appellant’s brief of argument.
Justice Idris held that the written address accompanying the July 16 application was not signed, while its pagination exceeded the limit prescribed under Order 4 Rule 1 of the Supreme Court Rules.
The judge consequently struck out both applications as well as the written addresses accompanying them.
He further held that grounds one, two and three of the appeal were incompetent because they did not arise from the judgment of the lower court.
Justice Idris ruled that since the three grounds of appeal were incompetent, the issues distilled from them were equally incompetent and liable to be struck out.
In determining the surviving grounds four, five and six, as well as issues three and four distilled from them, the apex court held that the Court of Appeal was right in finding that Mrs. Olawumi’s brief of argument was incompetent despite her pending application seeking to regularise it.
The Supreme Court also affirmed the Court of Appeal’s refusal to invoke its powers under Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act to hear Mrs. Olawumi’s originating summons as a court of first instance, as requested by the appellant.
Justice Idris held that the appellate court could not have exercised its powers under Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act to determine the substantive originating summons after affirming the Federal High Court’s finding that the suit was statute-barred.
He further ruled that the Supreme Court could not invoke its powers under Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act to hear the substantive originating summons, as requested by the appellant, because the 180-day constitutional time limit for determining pre-election matters had already elapsed.
The unanimous judgment effectively upholds Governor Oyebanji’s nomination as the APC candidate and brings the legal challenge instituted by Mrs. Olawumi to a close.