Court Of Appeal sitting in Abuja Insists, Engr. Musa Wada is The Authentic Kogi State PDP Governorship Candidate.
Delivering its judgment, a three-man panel of the Court of Appeal held that “it is crooked colt of discretion for a court to raise an issue suo motu (raising issues that were not raised by any of the parties in the litigation) and determine same without hearing parties.
The panel of Justices led by Justice Ibrahim Muhammad Saulawa and comprising Justices Joseph E. Ekanen and Yasir Nimpar, equally set aside every order made by the trial cour to the effect that there was no primary election by PDP in the state and that the appellant was not a candidate in the election.
“Every order made by the trial court that there was no primary election and that the appellant was not a candidate in the election is hereby set aside”, the court held.
OBSERVERS TIMES earlier reported that a Kogi High Court sitting in Lokoja has voided the September 3, 2019 Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) governorship primary, saying the party had no candidate in the November 16 state governorship election.
Justice John Olorunfemi of the State High Court IV, Lokoja, in a judgment delivered on Thursday declared that the primary which produced Engr. Musa Wada as the party’s flag bearer was fraught with irregularities.
Abubakar Ibrahim Idris, the governorship aspirant and son of former Gov. Ibrahim Idris, had approached the court to challenge the emergence of Wada as the party’s flagbearer on grounds that the primary was inconclusive.
He had said that if all the missing votes that were actually for him were counted, he would have won but for the disruption and therefore, urged the court to declare him the winner of the primary.
But the judge declared, “An hour-long downpour and sporadic gunshots which led to delegates scampering for safety cannot be said to be fair enough to produce a candidate.”