A suit filed by some members of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra state against the nomination of Chukwuma Soludo as the party's flagship candidate in the forthcoming governorship elections was yesterday struck out as Judge Danlami Senchi of the Abuja High Court claimed the court lacked the jurisdiction to entertain the suit.
Mr. Soludo had emerged as the party's consensus candidate on the 9th of October amidst internal controversies and the Anambra High court's ruling which prevented the party from holding the required congress.
His emergence as the PDP's candidate out of other 47 candidates was to beat the deadline set by the Independent National Electoral commission for all political parties to submit the nomination forms of their flag bearers for the election.
Following this, on the 23rd of October a suit was filed by Valentine Ozigboh and Victoria Nwankwo, who had gotten an exparte ruling from the High court.
This prevented Mr. Soludo, former governor of the Central bank of Nigeria from parading himself as the party's candidate for the elections, which hold in February 2010.
A ‘domestic matter'
Delivering the ruling, Justice Danlami Senchi, said "we discovered that the plaintiffs did not exhaust the internal process to resolve the matter, in line with section 17 of the PDP's Constitution and section 85(1) of the 2006 Electoral Act. These provisions put nominations of candidates to stand for elections strictly under the purview of the political parties which the courts have no rights to adjudicate. In the light of this, the nomination of Soludo on October 9 to represent his party at the February 2010 Anambra governorship election is totally a domestic matter."
Counsel to Mr. Soludo, Patrick Ikwueto (a Senior Advocate of Nigeria), had earlier told NEXT that "the court determined that the matter is not justifiable before it, hence there is no more case and the candidate can head on to commence his campaigns for the election."
Aliyu Yakubu, Counsel to Mr. Ozigbo in his written address during the court proceedings argued that the PDP flagrantly disobeyed a subsisting order made by Aguata High Court in Anambra, barring the conduct of the party's primary to select candidate for the race.
However, Ikwueto countered Yakubu's submission, stating that "the order by the Aguata High Court was a temporary statement that lasted for only seven days which was honoured." Exparte vacated On the initial exparte ruling by the same court,
Justice Senchi ruled that "the exparte order granted to stop the nomination of Soludo is hereby vacated as the nomination was made before the motion was filed on the 21st of October."
He said that "the court was misled to granting the order based on the available fact presented by the plaintiffs who then showed that the nomination had not been done."
"It is the view of the court that two options are now left to the plaintiffs who can either appeal the ruling or take the matter back to the Anambra High Court that has jurisdiction to hear it,'' he ruled.
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