The candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, for the September 21 governorship election in Edo State, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, has once again scaled the judicial hurdle on his path to contest the gubernatorial poll as the Appeal Court sitting in Abuja affirmed him as the duly nominated candidate of his party...READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE ▶▶
The court also dismissed the allegation of forgery of voter card levelled against Ighodalo by the claimants, Arthur Esene and Anselm Ojezua, stating that they could not prove elements of the said forgery.
Recall that Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court, had earlier dismissed the case for being statute-barred. Justice Omotosho had held that not only did they fail to prove their claim that Ighodalo forged his voter’s card, but also that non-possession of voter card did not constitute a disqualifying factor under the Constitution and the Electoral Act to deny a candidate from contesting election.
In the lead judgement of the Court of Appeal on Friday, Justice Hamma Barka affirmed the judgement by Justice Omotosho and held that the suit filed before the Federal High Court by Ojezua and four others was filed out of time and was statute barred.
Justice Barka, in the Appeal number CA/ABJ/CV/863/2024, ruled that the “suit was filed after the time limit and is therefore dismissed.”
While ruling that “Jurisdiction is a threshold issue and a pre-election suit filed after the 14-day limit and any breach (even by one day), means that the court is without jurisdiction”, Justice Barka submitted that even on the merits, “the allegation of forgery was not proven at all by the Claimant as they woefully failed to prove the elements of the alleged forgery.”
Consequently, he struck out the appeal for being without merit, and slammed N1 million costs each on the appellants to be paid to the PDP and Asue Ighodalo.
With the ruling, all doubts and allegations surrounding the eligibility of Dr. Asue Ighodalo to contest for the September 21 governorship election have been cleared.
