2019 Elections: Supreme Court dashes the hope of Rivers APC

The hope of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) to present candidates for the forthcoming
elections in Rivers State has been dashed by the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court of Nigeria

This is because the Apex Court on Tuesday struck out an appeal filed
by the party challenging the judgment of a High Court in Rivers State
which barred it from conducting any primaries in the state to nominate
candidates for 2019 elections.

The Supreme Court judgement came barely one week after same court
stopped the APC from fielding candidates in all elections in the state.

The ruling APC was in support of Mr Tonye Cole’s
candidature for the governorship election which the Magnus Abe group
rejected.

A five-man panel of the Apex court, headed by Justice Bode
Rhodes-Vivour, struck out remaining three appeals filed by the APC,
Ojukaye Flag-Amachree and Tonye Cole, on grounds that they were statute
barred, since the appeals was filed outside the time allowed under
Section 285(9) and (12) of the Constitution as amended by the 4th
Alteration Act.

Justice Amina Augie, who read the lead ruling, which ended the APC
appeals, said the appellants, who were not parties to the original suit
were not allowed by the Appeal Court in Port-Harcourt, the opportunity
to appeal the Oct. 10, 2018 judgment because they filed their appeal out
of time.

Justice Augie said the appeals, which were, this morning (yesterday),
consolidated by the court – SC/81/2019 (another appeal filed by APC),
SC/1332/2018 (by Ojukaye Flag-Amchree) and SC/1334/2018 (by Tonye
Patrick Cole and others) – are statute barred.

The judge said the appellants have no leg to stand on, since the main
appeal filed by the APC -SC/1333/2018, against the Oct. 10 judgment,
had earlier been struck out by the court in the judgment delivered on
Tuesday morning by Justice Amiru Sanusi.