Supreme Court grants accelerated hearing in Nwoko, Nwaoboshi’s case

A five-man panel of Supreme Court Justices led by the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria Tanko Muhammad, on Tuesday in Abuja, granted the application for an accelerated hearing in case a case filed by Ned Nwoko of the PDP against Peter Nwaoboshi, a senator.

Mr Nwoko is praying the court to upturn the Court of Appeal judgment which declared incumbent Mr Nwaoboshi as the duly elected senator for the Delta North Senatorial District.

This follows an application to that effect from Onyeka Nwokolo, Counsel to Mr Nwoko.

The Court of Appeal Abuja had on May 30 declared Mr Nwaoboshi as the winner of the PDP Delta North Senatorial primaries held in October 2018, which necessitated the INEC to issue him a Certificate of Return.

The Federal High Court Abuja had earlier in March 2019 declared Mr Nwoko as the authentic winner of the primaries, on the basis that PDP wrongly substituted his name (Nwoko) name with that of Mr Nwaoboshi in the list of candidates submitted to INEC.

However, the current occupier of the seat, Mr Nwaoboshi, through his counsel Anthony Idigbe, SAN, did not oppose the prayers for accelerated hearing, by Mr Nwoko’s lawyer.

The apex court however rejected a cross appeal from Mr Idigbe for being defective.

Similarly, the Supreme Court declined to entertain a motion to be an interested party filed by Doris Uboh, the APC candidate in the same election.

The court informed her counsel Obinna Nwosu that the 14days permitted by the law to appeal a judgement had already lapsed.

The case was adjourned to July 9 for continuation.

(NAN)