The Court of Appeal, Abuja, on Thursday, rejected an appeal by the sacked chairman of the Action Alliance (AA) party, Kenneth Udeze, seeking to reverse the nullification of the candidacy of Hamza Al-Mustapha and others.
A three-member panel of the appellate court, led by its president, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, in a ruling, held that the appeal was defective and hence, incompetent.
Al-Mustapha, the former aide to the late military head of state, Sani Abacha, won the presidential primary election of the party conducted by the Udeze faction with a total of 506 votes, defeating Samson Odupitan, his only opponent, on June 9 in Abuja.
Justice Dongban-Mensem, in the lead ruling, held that Udeze was wrong to have initiated the appeal in the name of the AA and also listed the party as a respondent. The judge said that the AA could not be an appellant and a respondent in the same appeal.
The ruling was on the appeal marked: CA/ABJ/PRE/ROA/CV/1472MI/2022, with which Udeze (who was suspended and later expelled) had sought to void the December 22, 2022 ruling of the Federal High Court (FHC) in Abuja.
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Justice Zainab Abubakar of the Abuja FHC had, on December 22, 2022, dismissed Udeze’s application to set aside the court’s November 4, 2022 judgement recognising the candidates produced by the Adekunle Rufai Omo-Aje leadership of the party.
Udeze, whose suspension and expulsion as the AA chairman had been upheld in two judgments of the Court of Appeal, had applied to the FHC, Abuja to set aside the November 4 judgment, claiming it was obtained by fraud and that he was still the party’s national chairman.
In the November 4 judgement delivered by Justice Abubakar, the court ordered INEC to accept the list of candidates submitted to it by the Omo-Aje leadership of the AA and to discountenance the candidates submitted by Udeze, which Hamzat Al-Mustpha was a presidential candidate.
Also, in her December 22 ruling, Justice Abubakar reaffirmed that, with the two subsisting judgments of the Court of Appeal and another decision by a FHC in Abeokuta, Udeze cannot lawfully lay claim to being the chairman of the party.
The two judgments of the Court of Appeal were delivered on January 7, 2022 and November 11, 2022, while the ruling by the FHC in Abeokuta was delivered on September 8, 2022 by Justice J. O. Abdulmalik in a suit marked: FHC/AB/CS/120/2022.
Abubakar held that her earlier judgment delivered on Nov. 4 was not obtained by fraud as claimed by Udeze. NAN
