Justice Dongban-Mensem held that the sacked Chairman of the Action Alliance (AA) party, Kenneth Udeze, was wrong to have initiated the appeal in the name of the AA and also listed the party as a respondent.
By Jeffrey Agbo
A Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has dismissed an appeal seeking to reverse the nullification of the presidential candidacy of Maj. Hamza Al-Mustapha (retd).
President of the Court, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, leading a three-member panel on Thursday said the appeal was defective and incompetent.
Justice Dongban-Mensem held that the sacked Chairman of the Action Alliance (AA) party, Kenneth Udeze, was wrong to have initiated the appeal in the name of the AA and also listed the party as a respondent.
The judge said that the AA could not be an appellant and a respondent in the same appeal.
Al-Mustapha, the former chief security officer to the late Gen. Sani Abacha, won the presidential primary election of the party conducted by Udeze’s faction with a total of 506 votes, defeating Samson Odupitan, his only opponent, on June 9 in Abuja.
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The Thursday ruling was on the appeal marked: CA/ABJ/PRE/ROA/CV/1472MI/2022, with which Udeze, who was suspended and later expelled, had sought to void the December 22, 2022 ruling of the Federal High Court (FHC) in Abuja.
Justice Zainab Abubakar of the Federal High Court in Abuja had on December 22, 2022, dismissed Udeze’s application to set aside the court’s November 4, 2022 judgement recognising the candidates produced by Adekunle Omo-Aje’s leadership of the party.
Udeze, whose suspension and expulsion as the AA chairman, had been upheld in two judgments of the Court of Appeal, had applied to the Federal High Court, Abuja to set aside the November 4 judgment, claiming it was obtained by fraud and that he was still the party’s national chairman. But the court ruled against him.