10th September, 2012
The final affirmation to Governor Idris Wada’s victory at the last Kogi state gubernatorial election was on Monday handed down by the Supreme Court in Abuja following the dismissal of two appeals brought before the court by Mr. Abubakar Audu and his party, the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN.
A 7 man panel of the court led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mariam Aloma Muktar, struck out the appeals challenging the decision of the Court of Appeal which had earlier upheld Wada’s victory.
In dismissing the appeals, the court held that they were filed outside 14 days from when the Court of Appeal delivered its decision affirming the governor’s election as prescribed by the Practice Direction guiding election appeals. The Court of Appeal judgment was delivered on 14th July.
The court also declined the invitation by the ACN and her candidate to extend time for them to enable their appeal to be determined on its merit and insisted that the appeal is incompetent having failed to comply with the practice direction set up by the court pursuant to sections 233 and 236 of the Nigerian Constitution.
“Granting the application will be contrary to the practice direction and the constitution itself. This court has no jurisdiction to grant the application being sought, moreso when the applicants failed to adduce any cogent and verifiable reason why the court must exercise its discretion in favour of the applicants” the court maintained.
Audu and his party had claimed that their appeal was filed outside the prescribed time frame because the certified true copy of the Court of Appeal’s judgment was only issued to them 2 days to the expiration of the 14 days and that they had difficulties collating materials for the filing of the appeal.
The court considered that reason insufficient enough to warrant a failure on the applicants part to comply with the 14 days prescribed by the law.
“The Constitutional provisions were meant to expeditiously deal with election matters, there is no room for time to be extended here neither can the jurisdiction of this court be activated as the applicants did not adduce to any cogent reason why they failed to file their appeal within time”
Consequently, the appeal was dismissed and with that, the last obstacle standing against Governor Idris Wada and his office was effectively demolished.
By Nnamdi Felix / Abuja