Tina Amanda
An appeal court sitting in Port Harcourt has adjourned for hearing, a motion seeking to regularize the record of appeal on the matter involving the All Progressive Congress, APC; Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on the stay of execution of a federal high judgement which barred APC candidates from contesting the 2019 elections in Rivers State.
During the court proceeding, counsel to PDP argued that an application they filed seeking to strike out one of the appeals filed by the appellant on the ground that the record of appeal was incompetent and was not transmitted by the registrar of the lower court, but was compiled and transmitted by the appellant’s counsel.
The three-man panel led by justice Ali Gumul said there is a pending motion seeking to regularize the records that PDP sought to be struck out.
Justice Ali Gumul also said that the court will go to the substantive appeal and deal with substantial justice. He adjourned the case to 6th February for hearing and to enable PDP counsel to file their application.
Speaking to our reporter Tina Amanda, counsel to PDP Dike Udenna, said the court has no jurisdiction to hear the matter based on the irregular or incompetent record of appeal.
“We argued in the application but unfortunately for some other reasons the court did not agree with us to strike out or dismiss the record. In a manner of speaking, the record of appeal was prematurely compiled and transmitted, adding that the record of appeal was not certified by the court below, so if it is not certified that means its useless”
Also speaking, counsel to APC, Mustapha Ibrahim, said the court has allowed them to proceed with the application they filed hastily in order to regularize the record that has already been filed.
“The application that came up is an application by PDP asking that the appeal be struck out because in their own thinking the records where not properly filed, the court entertained argument and held that there is an application to regularize the records, that we should come tomorrow and move that application alongside other applications”
On his part, Henry Bello counsel to Magnus Abe and other APC candidates said that the court of appeal has not set aside the judgement of the federal high court delivered by Justice Kolawole Omotosho.
‘’What the court of appeal did is to stay the judgement of the federal high court. The judgement of the high court of Rivers state of 10th October 2018, has not been stayed and is still valid and subsisting, as we speak APC has no candidate in Rivers state‘’
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