Apex court dismisses Abimbola Olawumi’s appeal, upholds Court of Appeal judgment.
The Supreme Court has affirmed the nomination of Governor Abiodun Oyebanji as the All c (APC) candidate for the forthcoming Ekiti State governorship election.
A five-member panel of the apex court, in a unanimous judgment delivered on Friday, dismissed an appeal filed by aggrieved APC governorship aspirant, Mrs. Abimbola Olawumi, describing it as unmeritorious.
The judgment upheld the June 18 decision of the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which affirmed Oyebanji’s candidacy.
Olawumi had challenged the process that produced Oyebanji as the APC candidate and asked the court to nullify the outcome of the party’s governorship primary election, alleging that she was prevented from participating as an aspirant.
Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Mohammed Idris faulted the competence of applications filed by Olawumi on July 16 and July 23 seeking to regularise her notice of appeal and appellant’s brief of argument.
Justice Idris held that the written address accompanying the July 16 application was unsigned and that its pagination exceeded the limit prescribed under Order 4 Rule 1 of the Supreme Court Rules.
The court consequently struck out both applications and their accompanying written addresses.
The apex court further held that grounds one, two and three of the appeal were incompetent because they did not arise from the decision of the lower court, rendering the issues distilled from them liable to be struck out.
On the surviving grounds four, five and six of the appeal, Justice Idris held that the Court of Appeal was right in finding Olawumi’s brief incompetent despite her pending application seeking its regularisation.
He also upheld the lower court’s refusal to invoke its powers under Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act to hear Olawumi’s originating summons as a court of first instance.
According to the judge, the Court of Appeal could not invoke the provision after affirming the Federal High Court’s finding that the suit was statute-barred.
Justice Idris further held that the Supreme Court could not exercise its powers under Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act to hear the substantive originating summons because the 180-day constitutional period for determining pre-election matters had elapsed.
The Supreme Court subsequently dismissed the appeal and affirmed Governor Oyebanji’s nomination as the APC governorship candidate.