A Federal High Court sitting in Awka, Anambra State, yesterday, dismissed a case brought against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its governorship candidate, Nicholas Ukachukwu, over his nomination as the governorship candidate of the party for the November 8 poll.
The court dismissed the case as lacking in merit.
One of the contenders, Valentine Ozigbo, had opposed the duo over what he described as a faulty process that produced the winner.
In dismissing the suit, the court noted that the Supreme Court, in previously decided cases, had stressed that the decision of membership of political parties was a prerogative of the particular party.
It held that no other person or court has any jurisdiction to choose a candidate for the party.
Reacting to the verdict, counsel to the APC, Shedrak Ayo, said the court had once again lived up to expectations.
Lawyer for Ukachukwu, Joseph Mola Mathew, commended the judgment as a clear delivery of justice, noting that the case ab initio had no merit as it was “dead on arrival.”
He noted that it was trite in law that where the National Working Committee (NWC) of a party had cleared a candidate, no member had the jurisdiction to challenge the same.
IN their reaction, Ozigbo’s legal team, led by Umeh Kalu (SAN) and Berth Igwilo (SAN), saw the ruling as a miscarriage of justice.
They had argued that Ukachukwu’s membership records were “fraudulently backdated, in breach of the APC constitution and electoral rules.”
However, in the judgment delivered, which the Valentine Ozigbo Political Organisation considered perverse, Justice Evelyn Anyadike held that while there were “discrepancies worthy of concern” in the documentation presented by Ukachukwu, the court lacked the jurisdiction to substitute one candidate for another.
“The court cannot interfere in the internal matters of a political party where the plaintiff has not provided incontrovertible proof of the date of membership, nor shown that the party acted outside its constitutional powers,” the presiding judge ruled.
