A high Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has struck out a legal action instituted by a Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. John Echezona Unachukwu, challenging the conduct of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) general election, thereby clearing the way for the poll of election of new national officers in the country to go ahead.

In a ruling, Justice Olukayode Adeniyi yesterday held that the plaintiff lacked the locus standi to institute the action against the NBA on the ground of uncertainties in his names and documents he placed before the court.

The court upheld the argument of the NBA that the plaintiff was not the person disqualified by its electoral committee from contesting for the office of the national publicity secretary.

The court held that the plaintiff, who claimed in some document to be John Unachukwu Austin and John Echezona Unachukwu in some others, could not be the same person by a name Unachukwu John Austin, in the face of the law.

Justice Adeniyi held that the three names related to the plaintiff- John Echezona Unachukwu, John Unachukwu Austin and Unachukwu John Austin were radically different from one another and that no expertise was needed to differentiate among the names.

The Judge held that since the documents placed before the court by the plaintiffs and those placed before the court by the NBA contradicted themselves, the court would not engage in speculation as to whether the same person bears the three names.

The court further held that the plaintiff, who is a lawyer by profession and a judiciary editor of a newspapers organisation, did not dispose to affidavit to show the linkage among the three names in the documents the court considered.

It also held that by failure to depose to an affidavit to prove that he is the bearer of the three names, the plaintiff has not shown to the court that he was the one disqualified by the electoral committee of the NBA from contesting in the 2016 general election and, therefore, has no justifiable reason to institute the legal action against the association.

Unachukwu had dragged the NBA and five others before the court, challenging his disqualification from contesting the election, saying his disqualification was unwarranted and has no justification.

The plaintiff, through his counsel, Chukwuma Ekomaro (SAN), had also challenged the NBA from using the Internet voting for the election in place of the electronic voting, claiming that there was no sufficient technology across the country to support the internet voting.

Justice Adeniyi, therefore, warned that lawyers, as the conscience of the nation, must learn how to conduct their affairs with every sense of diligence, decency and nobility, so that the larger society would learn from them.