Former governor of Imo State, Emeka Ihedioha, and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have disclosed what they considered the faulty areas in the Supreme Court judgment that sacked him from office.
The apex court had on January 14, this year, sacked Ihedioha and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to recognise the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Hope Uzodinma as duly elected governor.
Meanwhile, impressed by Uzodinma’s performance since he took over governance in Imo State, the APC has urged the PDP to embrace the pronouncement of the apex court in good faith.
But the PDP has returned to the court, asking it to sack Uzodinma. The Motion on Notice dated February 5 and filed the same day, was brought pursuant to Section 6 (6) of the 1999 Constitution, Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act 2004, and under the inherent jurisdiction of the court.
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Some of the grounds for asking the court to review judgment with a view to rescinding it include a subsisting judgment of the Court of Appeal, which dismissed the petition filed by Uzodinma and his party as incompetent.
According to the party, the apex court in arriving at its judgment did not consider the Court of Appeal judgment in favour of Ihedioha and his party.
“The order of the Court of Appeal striking out the petition for being incompetent raised a jurisdiction issue, which the court ought to have resolved first before delving into the merits of the appeal.
“The failure of the court to consider and pronounce on this issue amounts to a failure of jurisdiction and completely erodes the jurisdiction of the apex court to consider the appeal on the merits.
“The Supreme Court never neither set aside the decision of the Court of Appeal striking out the petition for being incompetent nor made any pronouncement on it. In the absence of any pronouncement by the Supreme Court on this issue, the judgment of the Court of Appeal striking out the petition for being incompetent remains valid and subsisting,” the applicant held.
They held that the petitioner had misled the court into holding that a total of 213,495 votes were unlawfully excluded from the votes scored by the first applicant/respondent.
Other reasons for faulting the judgment include that it was allegedly delivered in error and that the court was misled to enter the judgment.
The applicants consequently prayed the court to set aside the judgment and reinstate Ihedioha as validly elected governor of Imo State. No date has been fixed for hearing.
Guardian
