The Supreme Court on Monday struck out an appeal filed by Senator Magnus Abe praying the court to make a pronouncement on the proprietary of the direct and indirect primary elections conducted by the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Rivers state for the nomination of its candidate for the 2019 general elections.
The apex court struck out the appeal on the grounds that the notice of appeal filed by the Senator was defective and not in compliance with the order of the court.
Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad who delivered the unanimous decision of the seven-member panel of Justices of the apex court held that the notice of appeal was defective because it did not contain the names and titles of parties in the matter.
Besides, the acting CJN also held that the notice of appeal offended section 285 of the 1999 constitution because amendment cannot be done to the notice of appeal in view of the fact that the 14 days required by law to file the appeal have expired.
Senator Abe had approached the court asking it to make a clarification on which of the two primary elections is authentic in the eyes of the law.
However, the APC through its counsel, Mr Jibrin Okutekpa (SAN) objected to hearing of the appeal on the grounds that names of appropriate persons affected by the suit were not listed on the notice of appeal and thereby making the appeal incompetent and incurably defective.
Justice Muhammad in the ruling agreed with the counsel to the APC and struck out the appeal for been defective.
Senator Magnus Abe, who is a factional leader of the Rivers APC, is praying the apex court to make a final pronouncement on the legality of both direct and indirect primary Polls conducted by the two factions of the party last year.
The motion dated March 1, 2019, was predicated on eight grounds and affidavit of urgency among which is that the matter being a pre-election suit must by law be fully determined within 60 days.
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