1st March, 2011
Barely two months after the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal instituted by the candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party, DPP, in Sokoto state governorship election of 2007, Alhaji Muhamadu Maigari Dingyadi, which subsequently gave rise to the crisis of confidence between the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloysius Katsina – Alu and the President of Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, the matter has resurfaced again before the apex court.
Dingyadi filed an application before the court seeking for the setting aside of a portion of the judgment delivered by the apex court in his appeal on 26 December 2010 wherein his other appeal challenging the victory of Governor Aliyu Wamakko in the 2007 governorship election in the state which was pending before the Sokoto Division of the Court of Appeal, was dismissed by the apex court.
He is challenging the jurisdiction of the apex court to have made a decision that affected a governorship election appeal pending before another court with jurisdiction to handle the matter.
According to Dingyadi’s counsel, Chief Akin Olujinmi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction in proceeding to dismiss the appeal pending before the Court of Appeal in Sokoto State.
While conceding that the apex court had the power to dismiss Dingyadi’s appeal before the court on the ground that it constitutes an abuse of court process, the senior advocate argued that consequent upon the dismissal of the appeal filed by his client at the apex court, that there was nothing more to warrant the intervention of the apex court in the case before the Sokoto Appeal Court whose decision was arrested by the dismissal of the appeal by the Supreme Court.
He also challenged the powers of the apex court in making the consequential orders it made with respect to the appeal pending in Sokoto.
By Nnamdi Felix / Abuja