BY AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – The Supreme Court on Thursday struck out the three appeals filed by Mr. Tonye Patrick Cole and his faction of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Rivers State against an earlier judgment that excluded the party from fielding candidates in the National Assembly, Governorship and State House of Assembly elections in Rivers State.
A seven-man panel of justices of the apex court led by Justice Ibrahim Muhammad, ruled that the three appeals were defective, incompetent and could therefore not be heard by the court.
The three appeals are SC/295/ 2019 instituted by the APC against the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), SC/266/2019 against Senator Magnus Abe and others and SC/267/2019 filed by Tonye Patrick Cole against Magnus Abe and others as respondents.
In the first ruling on SC/295/2019, Justice Muhammad ruled that the argument by PDP’s lawyer, Emmanuel Ukala (SAN) to the effect that the notice of appeal filed by the APC was defective is valid.
The Supreme Court Justice noted the reliefs sought from the Appeal Court was wrongly heeded in relation to a portion of the notice of appeals sought from the Supreme Court.
Justice Mohammed said the implication of the error is that the appellant did not seek any relief from the Supreme Court, and thereby contravened the court’s rules, a development that rendered the appeal incompetent.
He also said that the same errors were noticed in the other two appeals, which made the appellants’ lawyers, Jibrin Okutepa (SAN) and Tuduru Ede to withdraw both appeals, as a result of which the court struck them out.
With the verdict, the struggle by the APC in Rivers state to get a fresh election conducted in the state has been put to rest.
