Presidential Court Refuses To Recognise Apapa As Labour Party Representative

The Presiding Justice of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PREPEC), Justice Haruna Tsammani on Wednesday declined to accept Mr Lamidi Apapa or any other person as representative of the Labour Party in the party’s petition against the election of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi had dragged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu, his Vice President-elect, Senator Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the presidential court over the declaration of Tinubu as winner of the February 25 presidential election.

Although, the court had since last week accepted the announcement of one Obiora Ifoh, the National Publicity Secretary of the LP, as representative of the party, it however refused to accept any representative at Wednesday’s proceedings owing to Apapa and the National Women Leader of the LP, Mrs Dudu Manuga claiming to be representing the LP.

When the matter was called, Obi represented himself as the 1st petitioner and handed over the microphone to Manuga, but before the court could record the name of Manuga, Apapa stood up to introduce himself as National Chairman of the party and representative of the Labour Party.

Responding, Justice Tsammani who observed that “there is a little disagreement about who is representing the Labour Party”, held that, “we are not recognizing anybody as representative of the party “.

The court subsequently went ahead to take the appearances of other parties in the petition.