The Supreme Court has affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeal, Abuja, which upheld the nomination of Ekiti State Governor, Abiodun Oyebanji, as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress for the June 20 governorship election in the state.
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A five-member panel of the apex court, in a unanimous judgment delivered on Friday, dismissed the appeal filed by an aggrieved APC governorship aspirant, Mrs. Abimbola Olawumi, after holding that it was unmeritorious and incompetent.
Olawumi had challenged the process that led to Oyebanji’s nomination, alleging that she was prevented from participating in the APC governorship primary. She asked the court to void the outcome of the primary and grant reliefs in her favour.
Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Mohammed Idris upheld the objections raised against some applications filed by Olawumi on July 16 and July 23, seeking to regularise her notice of appeal and appellant’s brief of argument.
The court held that the written address accompanying the July 16 application was not signed and that its pagination exceeded the limit allowed under Order 4 Rule 1 of the Supreme Court Rules. The apex court consequently struck out the two applications and their accompanying written addresses.
Justice Idris also held that grounds one, two and three of the appeal were incompetent because they did not arise from the decision of the Court of Appeal. He said the issues formulated from those grounds were equally incompetent and liable to be struck out.
On the remaining grounds four, five and six, as well as issues three and four distilled from them, the Supreme Court held that the Court of Appeal was right when it found Olawumi’s brief incompetent despite her pending application to regularise it.
The apex court also upheld the Court of Appeal’s refusal to invoke its powers under Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act to hear Olawumi’s originating summons as a court of first instance.
Justice Idris held that the Court of Appeal could not have assumed jurisdiction to hear the substantive originating summons after affirming the Federal High Court’s finding that the suit was statute-barred.
The Supreme Court further held that it could not invoke its own powers under Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act to hear the substantive originating summons because the 180-day constitutional time limit for determining pre-election matters had already lapsed.
The decision finally laid to rest Olawumi’s challenge to Oyebanji’s nomination as the APC candidate for the Ekiti governorship election.
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