Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal has reserved judgment in an appeal filed by Senator Peter Nwaoboshi over the nullification of his candidature as Senator-elect.of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for Delta North.
The Federal High Court in Abuja had earlier ruled that Nwaoboshi was not the lawful PDP candidate for the Delta North Senatorial District in the February 23 legislative poll.
The high court ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to immediately publish the name of Ned Nwoko in place of Nwaoboshi’s for the district.
However, Nwaoboshi being dissatisfied with the verdict approached the Court of Appeal, praying that the high court judgment is set aside.
In one of his five grounds of appeal, Nwaoboshi, who is the sitting senator representing the district, contended that the lower court erred in law for not dismissing the pre-election suit, which he said was filed after 14 days, contrary to the provisions of Section 285(9) of the Fourth Alternation to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999.
While adopting his brief of argument before the appellate court yesterday, counsel to Nwaoboshi, Anthony Idigbe ( SAN ) urged the three-man panel to set aside the judgement of the lower court.
In his counter submission, counsel to Ned Nwoko, Ahmed Raji ( SAN) asked the court to dismiss the appeal as it was defective, null and frivolous.
Nwoko’s counsel held that Nwaoboshi’s lawyer relied on issues that were not known to law and never emanated from the Federal High Court judgement.
In conclusion, Nwoko’s lawyer expressly asked the court to dismiss Nwaoboshi’s appeal for lack of merit and uphold the judgement of the Federal High Court in favour of Nwoko.
