A Federal High Court sitting in Kano, presided over by Justice M N Yunusa, has declared the candidature of Abia State Governor-elect Dr Alex Otti and all Labour Party candidates in Abia and Kano States null and void.
The court concluded that their election did not comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act of 2022.
The Court ruled in Suit No FHC/KN/CS/107/2023 filed by Mr Ibrahim Haruna Ibrahim against the Labour Party and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, that the Labour Party’s failure to submit its membership register to the INEC within 30 days before their primaries invalidates the process.
“A party that has not complied with the provisions of the electoral act cannot be said to have a democratic mandate.””Because the first defendant is not a candidate in an election and cannot be declared the winner of an election, the votes credited to him are a waste of time,” the Judge decided.
According to a report on Wednesday, the Labour Party accused a “breakaway group” of the party led by acting National Chairman Lamidi Apapa of petitioning a Kano State court to have the party’s recent electoral gains annulled.
In a statement, the LP’s acting National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, said, “The Labour Party has been informed of an illegal attempt by a breakaway group in the party led by Lamidi Apapa to mislead a Kano state High court to invalidate all the elections won by the Labour Party in Kano.”the recently completed general election.”
The party spokesman claimed that “the suspended National Legal Adviser and a key member of the disgraced Apapa group, Samuel Akingbade Oyelekan, clandestinely sneaked out of Abuja to Kano state on Wednesday while the Presidential Appeal Tribunal was sitting in Abuja with all attentions focused on it, where he in collaboration with some members of the other political parties asked the court to invalidate all the elections won by the Labour Party, particularly the nationalHe went on to say that Akingbade, who disguised himself as representing the Labour Party, did not oppose the motion, causing the hapless judge to postpone his decision until Thursday (yesterday).
Ifoh then requested that the judiciary and all law enforcement authorities, including the police and the Department of State Services, DSS, take note that Akingbade and Apapa’s adherents had ceased to represent the party.
