The Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu has stopped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its Senatorial candidate for Anambra Central, Mrs Uche Ekwunife [above] from participating in the re-run election set for early next year.
In the certified true copy of the lead judgement delivered on December 7, 2015 by Justice A.D. Yahaya with two others, Justices T.O. Awotoye and B.G. Sanga respectively, obtained from the court, Tuesday, the appellate court set aside the decision of the lower tribunal that sat in Awka which affirmed that the Mrs. Ekwunife was validly nominated as candidate of the PDP for the senatorial seat.
Justice Yahaya declared that “Whether it was the “National body of PDP in Anambra State,” the “5-man National Assembly Electoral Committee, or the care-taker committee that conducted the primary which produced the 11th respondent as the nominated candidate of PDP to contest the election, it is immaterial; since by paragraph 25(1) of exhibit R1, it is the state special congress that should conduct election into the primary for the purpose of nominating a candidate to contest election into the National Assembly.”
The court ruled: “The 11th respondent was therefore not the product of a valid primary and was therefore not duly and legitimately nominated. That has disqualified her from contesting the election into the Anambra Central senatorial District.
“I must observe that a lot of the political parties in this country have still not yet stabilized, unfortunately. There are still a lot of acrimonies in the running of their affairs, and as affairs, and as a result factions of the parties exist with various grudges mostly bordering on imparity.
“This may just simmer many times but when elections are nigh, and the parties fail to put their acts together, to constitutionally arrive at properly-nominated candidates, disastrous consequences cannot be avoided. The courts would not hesitate, in pursuance of their Constitutional roles, to strike down actions of parties that do not conform with the law of their constitution and guidelines. This obviously results in serious financial losses to the parties, the party members and the country as a whole, when circumspection would have avoided it.”
Justice Yahaya further said that “nomination is part and parcel of qualification to stand for an election and since an election can be challenged on the grounds of lack of qualification, it follows that the appropriate forum to challenge it after the election is held, is the Election Tribunal, especially where the challenger is from a different political party and may not be aware of the defect in qualification and have sufficient interest, until the person being challenged contests and is declared the winner thereof.
“The Tribunal was therefore patently wrong in its decision. It had completely misapprehended the case presented in that vein and that had coloured its vision, denying it the composure and dispassionate consideration of the case.
“It was this cloudy vision, that made the court to gloss over the issue as to whether the right body had conducted the primary that nominated the 11th respondent as the candidate in the election. Once it held the opinion that the issue of nomination is an internal affair and not justiceable, denying it the jurisdiction to entertain the issue, it lost focus and that clearly is prejudicial to the interest of the appellants.
“The decision arrived at was perverse and the right course of action, is to set aside the decision. Consequently, the perverse decision which held that the 11th Respondent had been properly and legitimately sponsored by the 12th respondent (PDP), must and is hereby set aside. Issue No. 1 is thus resolved in favour of the appellants and against the respondents.”
Umeh had filed an appeal on November 6th, 2015 challenging the decision of the lower Tribunal which sat at Awka, that had earlier dismissed the petition he brought against the election of Ekwunife in the Anambra Central senatorial office.
Umeh, who was the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA candidate for the election, had among other things, asked the court to determine whether the trial court correctly or rightly held that Ekwunife was qualified to contest the election within the context of section 65(2) (b) of the constitution.
But on December 7th, the Court of Appeal invalidated Ekwunife’s election and disqualified her from participating in the re-run election which it ordered to be held within 90 days.
Speaking with journalists, Tuesday, Umeh said that by the verdict of the Appeal Court, both the PDP and Ekwunife have lost the opportunity to participate in the re-run election.
He also said that Senator Chris Ngige, the All Progressive Congress, APC candidate, now serving as Minister of Labour and Productivity, had informed him that he would not challenge the outcome of the election and would likely not continue with the contest as doing so would lead to his resigning from his present ministerial position.
This, Umeh said, has left him and 13 other candidates to participate in the re-run which date INEC has not fixed. “I am ready for the election against all the qualified candidates including Ngige if he wishes to run.”
“The PDP is completely out of the election and the supporters of its candidate have left them. Many of them have pledged their support for me. These include Prince Engineer Arthur Eze, who endorsed me publicly on December 19, 2015. Besides, if Ekwunife was to participate in the re-run election, she was sure of losing and I think the Court of Appeal was kind enough to disqualify her from the re-run election,” Umeh said.
Describing the verdict of the appellate court as “a landmark judgement”, the former APGA National Chairman said that he has always reposed confidence in the judiciary, stressing that in the instant case a judicial precedence had been set to the effect that the issue of nomination of candidates for any election could no longer be treated as an internal affair of the party.
He, however, urged the PDP to stop disturbing the public peace with its planned “phantom primaries” saying the issue of primary and substitution of candidates for the 2015 elections had ended long ago.
“Since their candidate (Ekwunife) has been disqualified by the Court of Appeal, the PDP has lost the chance of participating in the re-run and the only option left is for them to wait until 2019 to field candidate for another election,” said Umeh.