Rivers gov’ship tussle: S’Court strikes out APC, Tonye Cole appeals

.PDP applauds verdict, urges APC to join hands with Wike to move Rivers forward

Andrew Orolua, Abuja and Amaka Agbu, Port Harcourt

The All Progressives Congress (APC) and its factional governorship candidate in Rivers State, Chief Tonye Cole, on Thursday, lost their appeals that would have made them to be reckoned as participants in the just concluded governorship election in Rivers State.

The Supreme Court dismissed their separate appeals on the ground that the notices of appeal that brought the appeal, were incompetent in law.

In the notices of appeal, the two appellants had asked the Court of Appeal to make them participants in the general election in Rivers State.

APC represented by its counsel, Chief Jibrin Okutekpa, SAN, had prayed the seven-man panel of the Supreme Court to overrule its own decision upholding the lower court order barring APC from participating in the governorship election in Rivers State.

The counsel’s grouse was that the refraining order from the high court of Rivers State was obtained in a fraudulent manner.

However, Counsel to the PDP, Chief Emmanuel Okala, SAN, had drawn the attention of the Supreme Court to the notice of appeal of APC where the party erroneously prayed the Court of Appeal instead of the Supreme Court to grant its reliefs.

Okala, who cited several authorities, submitted that the APC had not asked for anything from the Supreme Court and therefore, the notice of appeal was incompetent in law and urged the apex court to strike out and dismiss same.

In the court’s ruling delivered by the acting CJN, Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, the court agreed that the notice of appeal by APC was incurably defective and grossly incompetent.

Justice Mohammad therefore struck out the notice of appeal for being incompetent.

In the second appeal filed by Tonye Cole through Tuduru Eteh, the notice of appeal was wrongly addressed to the Court of Appeal in the reliefs being sought that the Supreme Court should officially declare him as APC governorship candidate for the 2019.

This promptly made the counsel to withdraw the incompetent notice of appeal and which was subsequently struck out by the acting CJN.

In the 3rd appeal between APC and Senator Magnus Abe, the court struck out the notice of appeal on the same grounds that it was incompetent having been addressed to the Court of Appeal instead of the Supreme Court.

With the latest decisions of the Supreme Court, all court actions concerning Rivers State APC in relation to 2019 general election have been laid to rest.

Meanwhile, the Rivers State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has applauded Thursday’s ruling of the Supreme Court which struck out the consolidated appeals of the Rivers All Progressives Congress (APC) and Tonye Cole for lacking in merit.

The party said that the ruling had once more heightened the dignity of the apex court as the last hope of the common man.

A statement by the State PDP chairman, Chief Felix Obuah, he noted that “having exhausted all avenues of defusing the choice of Governor Nyesom Wike by the mass of Rivers people and failed, the APC has no choice but to acknowledge the obvious fact that the re-election of Chief Wike has divine endorsement and should joyfully join the rest of Rivers people in this divine mandate.”

Chief Obuah recalled “the barrage of litigations and unprecedented conspiracies by the APC just to stop one man, Governor Wike, from being re-elected and yet he survived all and went on to win the March 9 Governorship poll amid historic theatricals as never experienced in the history of elections in Nigeria,” describing it as simply an Act of God.

The State PDP chairman, however, called for an end to the alleged beating of war drums, “all the macabre songs and tintinnabulation of political jingoism by the opposition to satisfy the whims and caprices of one self-seeking man so that Governor Wike who undoubtedly means well for the Rivers people could concentrate on his service delivery and good governance to the state.”

Obuah also commended what he described as wisdom and maturity exhibited by Governor Nyesom Wike while the alleged APC’s conspiracies lasted and urged him to, in like manner, continue to see Rivers State as one united indivisible stock of God’s people and lead them as such.

The state PDP chairman said the PDP was delighted and would forever remain grateful to God for seeing them through all the stress and above all, granting the Rivers PDP undisputed victory at last.

The party recalled that all the three consolidated appeals by the APC and Tonye Cole were struck out by the Supreme Court on Thursday, April 11, 2019, on account that the appeals lacked merit and were grossly incompetent, insisting that all previous judgments barring  the APC from participating in the 2019 general elections in Rivers State were sacrosanct.

The Daily Times recalls that the Supreme Court in similar ruling last Monday, struck out the Magnus Abe’s faction’s appeal seeking recognition of its own direct primaries.

Thursday’s ruling of the Supreme Court striking out the consolidated appeals by the APC and Tonye Cole had, therefore, ended all the litigations by the party to put a wedge in the wheel of democratic governance in Rivers State, the PDP stated.