A legal process aimed at cancelling all the primaries conducted in Imo State by the All Progressives Congress, APC, has been filed at the Federal High Court, Owerri.
The legal action against the APC and 44 others vide suit number FHC/OW/CS/87/22, was brought before the court by a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Kingsley Ihenacho and two others.
One of the declaratory orders, according to the process Ihenacho filed, was for the court to decide on the constitutionality or otherwise, of actions taken by any person holding and operating two executive positions at the same time, are valid.
In another ground canvassed in the suit, Ihenacho wants the court to declare: “Whether the APC and Mai Mala Buni, Governor of Yobe State and the then Chairman, Extraordinary Convention Committee of the APC, violated Section 183 of the Nigerian Constitution, as amended, and Section 82(3) of the Electoral Act, 2022, by conducting the election that brought Senator Abdullahi Adamu as the National Chairman of the APC, in a national convention”, when he (Buni) held dual executive positions.
In another ground canvassed in the suit, Ihenacho wants the court to declare: “Whether the APC and Mai Mala Buni, Governor of Yobe State and the then Chairman, Extraordinary Convention Committee of the APC, violated Section 183 of the Nigerian Constitution, as amended, and Section 82(3) of the Electoral Act, 2022, by conducting the election that brought Senator Abdullahi Adamu as the National Chairman of the APC, in a national convention”, when he (Buni) held dual executive positions.
Ihenacho similarly, sought a declaration that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, violated Section 183 of the Nigerian Constitution as amended and Section 82(3) of the Electoral Act, 2022, by publishing the names of APC candidates, for the forthcoming general elections, when they emanated from primary elections conducted by Adamu, who also emerged from a process engineered by a dual capacity executive officer.
He, therefore, prayed for “an order of the court that the three APC senatorial candidates, 10 APC Federal House of Representative candidates and 27 Imo State House of Assembly candidates, should not parade themselves as candidates of the APC, in the general elections of 2023.”
The presiding judge, Hon. Justice B. O. Quadric, granted leave to the plaintiffs to serve the defendants, all the processes by substituted means, and adjourned the matter to February 2, 2023, for a hearing.
