My re-election not affected by court judgement, Omo-Agege insists

Representative of Delta Central Senatorial District, Ovie Omo-Agege, yesterday insisted that the decision of Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, which sacked All Progressives Congress (APC) state executive led by Jones Ode Erue, did not affect his reelection.

Justice Toyin Adegoke had on March 19, sacked the Erue-led executive and recognised the Chief Cyril Ogodo executive, thereby nullifying all functions carried out by the sacked executive, including the primaries that produced Omo-Agege.

But the senator in a statement issued by his aide, Nath Dortie, argued that since he was not a party to the suit on the Delta APC leadership crisis, he was not bound by the court ruling.

“On March 18, 2019, Justice Toyin Adegoke of the Federal High Court, Asaba, gave a judgement in suit No: FHC/ASB/76/2018 which supposedly recognised Chief Cyril Ogodo and persons under him as APC executive in Delta State, instead of the Prophet Jones Ode Erue executive duly recognised by the party’s National Working Committee (NWC).

“This judgement is in conflict with the valid, unchallenged and subsisting June 18, 2018, judgement of Justice Chikere of the Federal High Court, Abuja, in suit No: PHC/ABJ/CS/509/18 which validated, recognised and gave legal life to the Jones-led executive, a judgement that the plaintiffs in the Asaba court failed to set aside or appeal against.

“Although the narrow issue before the Asaba court is the Delta APC leadership question and given that no contestant in the 2018 primaries was not a party to the action, Justice Adegoke nonetheless made pronouncements that ostensibly touched on the rights of the contestants in the said primaries in their absence.

“Indeed, the judgement seems to curiously target, for maximum harm, the rights of persons who were shut out of the case by questionable nature of otherwise simple applications to join the action to defend their threatened rights,” the statement reads.