Ejiro Lucky<\/p>\n
The All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate Timipre Sylva, a former minister of petroleum resources, has received last-minute legal support from the Appellate Court to run in the upcoming Bayelsa governorship election. The ruling, delivered less than 24 hours before the election, signals the end of the penultimate round of legal challenges seeking Sylva’s removal from the electoral race.<\/p>\n
The appeal, brought by Mrs. Isikima Johnson, was scrutinized by Justice Binta Zubar, who declared the suit unjusticiable and brought in bad faith against the respondents. The court, in unanimous agreement, dismissed the allegations that Sylva had taken the oath of governorship office twice, emphasizing that the first instance had already been invalidated by competent courts.<\/p>\n
Addressing the accusations against the APC, the court also dismissed claims that the April 14, 2023 primary election, which selected Sylva as the flagbearer, contravened provisions of the law. The court endorsed the arguments put forth by Mr. James Ogwu Onoja, SAN, who represented Sylva, highlighting the transparency of the primary election conducted through a direct voting process.<\/p>\n
Onoja detailed the adoption of direct primary by the APC and the meticulous conduct of the election across 106 wards in the 8 Local Government Areas of Bayelsa. Sylva emerged as the frontrunner with 52,062 votes, while the appellant lagged behind in fourth place with 584 votes. The court acknowledged the overwhelming evidence presented by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the APC, affirming the legality of the primary election.<\/p>\n
The Appellate Court emphasized the statute-barred nature of the appellant’s case, noting that it was filed outside the 14-day window allowed by law for pre-election matters. In essence, the court upheld the earlier judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja, delivered by Justice Inyang Ekwo on September 26, which dismissed the suit for lack of merit and substance.<\/p>\n
The appellant had initially brought the case against the APC, INEC, and Sylva, seeking an order to disqualify him from participating in the November governorship election in Bayelsa. Her objections were based on the claim that Sylva had held the governorship office twice and had taken the oath of office and allegiance on two occasions. Additionally, she asserted that the April 14 primary election was illegal and against APC’s guidelines. The High Court had dismissed the suit, a decision later affirmed by the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ejiro Lucky The All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate Timipre Sylva, a former minister of petroleum resources, has received last-minute legal support from the Appellate Court to run in the upcoming Bayelsa governorship election. The ruling, delivered less than 24 hours before the election, signals the end of the penultimate round of legal challenges seeking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-5502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5504,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502\/revisions\/5504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}