Abia State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has raised the alarm over plot to impose immediate past minister of state for mines and steel development, Mr Uchechukwu Ogah, as the party’s governorship candidate for the 2023 general elections, using the court.
The party recalled that Ogah filed a suit on June 7, 2022, at the Federal High Court, Umuahia, Abia State capital challenging the outcome of the APC’s primary election conducted on May 26, 2022, by indirect mode.
It said the contest produced High Chief Ikechi Emenike (first defendant) as the governorship candidate.
The APC claimed that on July 6, 2022, the suit came up for the first time before Justice E.A. Anyadike of the Federal High Court in Umuahia. On that same day, the judge said the chief judge of the Federal High Court directed that the case be transferred to the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court.
According to the party, the directive for the transfer of the case and the subsequent order of transfer came as a surprise to it, Emenike and the APC national chairman Senator Abdullahi Adamu who are the first to third defendants respectively as neither of them nor their counsel were served any application to that effect.
The party said it was shocked to find out that “the said transfer was predicated upon an application for transfer of the case made by Dr. Uchechukwu Sampson Ogah to the chief judge of the Federal High Court, wherein he deliberately lied in the said application that Abia State faces security challenges that will make it impossible for the case to be heard and determined by the Federal High Court, Umuahia Abia State and that he was shot in Abia State after the said suit was commenced by him.”
In a reaction, Emenike, through his lead counsel, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) on August 5, 2022, wrote to the chief judge of the Federal High Court, requesting for the re-transfer of the said case to Umuahia, and which application was not granted.
The APC and Adamu also applied for the transfer of the case back to Umuahia, to be consolidated with the other cases involving Ogah for full trial.
Not only that, Chief Daniel Eke, who was joined by the court as the 5th defendant through his counsel filed a motion/application, praying Hon Justice Binta Nyako to recuse herself from hearing the case based on lack of confidence.
But the APC said yesterday that it regretted that “contrary to the well-established position of the law, Justice Nyako dismissed both applications on October 12, 2022, and proceeded to hear the case on originating summons and thereafter adjourned same to November 11, 2022, for judgment.”
Thereafter both the APC and Eke filed a motion for leave to appeal against the dismissal of their respective applications before Justice Nyako.
On October 25, the judge granted them leave to appeal, which they did the same day and applied for the transmission of the record of appeal.
But narrating the party’s ordeal in the hands of Justice Nyako, Hon. Chidi Avaja, Abia State APC secretary, said, “Since October 25, 2022, when the appeals were filed, Hon Justice Binta Nyako seized the case file and refused to release same to the registrar of the Appeal Section to enable the record of appeal to be promptly compiled and transmitted to the registry of the Court of Appeal for prompt hearing of the two appeals before judgment is delivered in the case.”
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