A group, Association for Public Policy Analysis, has asked the Supreme Court to resolve all pending cases on the 2019 Imo State governorship election before the November 11 gubernatorial poll.

The court had fixed October 31, 2023, to hear two separate appeals filed since 2020, seeking to know the authentic candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 election.

The two appeals are fallout of the two judgments delivered by the court in late 2019 and early 2020, in which issues of authenticity of the APC gubernatorial candidate became thorny.

The apex court had disqualified Uche Nwosu from contesting the 2019 poll, because he held double nomination of the APC and the Action Alliance (AA).

In another judgment in 2020, the Supreme Court removed Emeka Ihedioha of PDP as the elected governor. It had declared APC’s Hope Uzodimma as the winner of the election.

Dissatisfied with how Uzodimma became the APC governorship candidate, a motion on notice was filed in 2019 by the PDP and Action People’s Party (APP), praying the apex court to interpret the effect of the judgment that held Nwosu as APC’s candidate, but disqualified him for having double nomination of APC and AA at the same time.

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Philip Umeadi, had filed another motion on notice to the Supreme Court for the interpretation of the judgment that sacked Nwosu, seeking enforcement of the same judgment as it relates to APC’s participation in the 2019 Imo governorship election.

Addressing a press briefing in Abuja on the two pending motions on notice, the group pleaded with the apex court to determine the two cases before another election is conducted.

National President of the association, Princewill Okorie, praised the court for fixing October 31 for the two suits, but raised the alarm over alleged plans to shift the date.

He said: “It is on record that there were two Supreme Court judgments of December 20, 2019, (SC/1384/ 2019) and January 14, 2020, (SC/462/2019).

“The two judgments raised fundamental issues affecting politics in Imo State, and yet to be resolved by the Supreme Court in the past three years.”

He pleaded with the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, to avoid pressure from any quarter that will truncate the hearing of the pending matters or delay their expeditious disposal before the November 11 governorship election in Imo.

Okorie said considering that the state has been politically unstable and unsafe since 2020, the association, on October 10, 2023, wrote a letter to the CJN, appealing to him to see that the motions are heard and rulings given expeditiously before the 2023 governorship election.