The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Friday put an end to the effort by Chijioke Edeoga to even be recognised as the governorship candidate of the Labour Party in Enugu State.
The Appellate Court dismissed his application seeking to be joined as an interested party in the case instituted by Captain Everest Nnaji which removed him as the candidate of the Labour Party.
The Court in a unanimous judgment by a 3-man panel of judges led by Justice Zama Senchi, ruled that Edeoga’s application was incompetent and constitutionally time barred in view of section 285(11) of the 1999 constitution as amended.
The judge said the court’s ruling was based on the fact that Chijioke Edeoga’s application was made on December 2nd, 2022, which is a period of 10 days outside section 205 of the Electoral Act which stated that Appeals on such matter should be made within 14 days of the initial judgement which was, in this case, delivered on Wednesday, November 9th, 2022.
Justice Senchi added that no court in Nigeria has power to grant the prayer of Edeoga because his appeal did not comply with the requisite time limit provided by the extant Electoral law.
He specifically stated in the ruling that Edeoga brought his application 10 days after the 14 days period allowed by the electoral law had elapsed, thus, making his prayer to be “statute barred and therefore incompetent.”
The court in rejecting Edeoga’s application for leave cited paragraph 6/7 of the court of Appeal Rules 2021 as the applicant failed to attach the certified true copy (CTC) of the decision of the trial court at the lower court and that this failure had rendered his application as lacking in merit and incompetent to appeal to the court as an interested party in the Labour Party’s Appeal case.
The judge citing a Supreme Court ruling in a case between APC vs Evan Enwerem 2022 and circumstance which described such late application/appeal as “legally ultra vires, incompetent, statute barred.
Justice Senchi however informed the court that his two other co-panel of judges (justice Tsamani and justice Williams) who were absent from the judgement proceedings, sent in their contributions affirming the judgement.
