The Supreme Court has adjourned the case filed by the All Progressives Congress, APC, seeking to reverse the sack of its elected members in Zamfara State.
The adjournment was due to the failure of the applicant to serve the processes and the hearing notice on the 141st – the 178th respondents in the case.
The respondents, who were not served are also members of the APC, an indication that the party is still dealing with internal strife within its ranks
The Supreme Court told the lawyer representing the APC, Robert Clarke, to go and put his house in order as the case cannot proceed without the parties who have not been served.
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Lawyer for Senator Kabiru Mararafa, who took his party – the APC – to court, leading to the declaration of the Zamfara primaries as illegal, also spoke after the proceedings
The case is now scheduled to come up on March 17, 2020.
Supreme Court adjourns motion by Emeka Ihedioha
For a second time, the Supreme Court has adjourned the motion by Emeka Ihedioha seeking a review judgement which removed him from office as Imo State Governor. The case is now to come up on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.
The adjournment followed a request by Ihedioha’s lawyer, Kanu Agabi (SAN), who informed the court that he has just been served a reply by Hope Uzodinma’s lawyer and will need to study it and respond appropriately.
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The court has also adjourned the motion by the APC seeking for a review of the judgement which sacked all its elected members in Zamfara State.
This is the second time the parties will be appearing before the Supreme Court since Ihedioha filed his motion for a review of the January 14, 2020, judgement.
He has raised several grounds of law which he is seeking to rely upon in his argument that the Supreme Court was misled to enter judgement against him.
One of the grounds is that the results, which the court used to give judgement in Uzodinma’s favour, only reflected results of the APC and not the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP candidate, and as such could not have been a proper representation of the outcome of the election which had 68 other candidates.
The Supreme Court had declared Senator Uzodinma winner after adding 213, 495 votes from 388 polling units said to have been excluded by the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
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However, Ihedioha insisted that the additional votes had affected the total number of votes scored by all the candidates to rise above the overall number of accredited voters.
But Governor Uzodinma had filed a preliminary objection to the application, asking primarily that Ihedioha’s motion be thrown out.
According to him, the invitation for the Supreme Court to review its decision is legally absurd and an insult to the credibility of the Supreme Court as the final court.
He also argued that Ihedioha did not meet the constitutional spread to be declared governor in the first place and that the Supreme Court gave its decision after a careful examination of the uncontroverted facts presented by the APC candidate.
At Monday’s resumed hearing, the lawyer to Ihedioha, Kanu Agabi, told the court that he had just been served a reply by Uzodinma’s lawyer and will need time to react.
Although Uzodinma, his party the APC and INEC indicated readiness to proceed with the hearing, the 7-member panel presided over by Chief Justice Tanko Mohammed acceded to the request for a short adjournment. The case is now fixed for Tuesday.
