Supreme Court affirms Diri’s election as Bayelsa Gov

LINUS CHIBUIKE

THE Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal against the election of Douye Diri as the Governor of Bayelsa State under the Peoples Democratic Party.

A seven-man panel of the apex court, led by Justice Sylvester Ngwuta, dismissed the appeal by the Advanced Nigeria Democratic Party (ANDP), noting that the appellant’s claim of wrongful disqualification of its candidate by the Independent National Electoral Commission was wrongly made.

It said this was because the candidate in question did not meet the constitutional age requirement.

The court also dismissed the appeals of Alliance for Democracy, Liberation Movement and Accord Party.

The Point had reported that the Court of Appeal had earlier nullified the tribunal judgement that sacked Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State and ordered a fresh election in the state, saying that the Tribunal wrongful evaluated the petition that led to the ruling.

The five-man panel of Justices, led by Justice Adzira Gana Mshella, said the verdict of the Bayelsa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which invalidated Diri’s election, was perverse and contemptuous of the law.

The judge who read the lead judgement of the Appeal Court, Justice Obande Ogbuinya, held that the Advanced Nigeria Democratic Party’s petition, filed to challenge its alleged unlawful exclusion from the governorship poll by the Independent National Electoral Commission, was wrongfully evaluated by the Tribunal.

In giving its ruling, the Appeal Court said there was enough evidence to prove that ANDP nominated underaged candidates for the election, in breach of sections 177, 182 and 187 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

It held that the petition filed by ANDP was statute-barred, adding that it was also a pre-election matter outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal.

The appellate court said whereas Section 285(9) of the Constitution made it mandatory that the issue of disqualification of candidates, being a pre-election matter, must be filed within 14 days after the cause of action arose, ANDP filed its petition at the tribunal, five months after its deputy governoship candidate was disqualified by INEC.

It therefore held that the ANDP case had become stale and sour before its February 26 petition.

“The case of the 1st Respondent was marooned in the ocean of statute bar. The cause of action had expired with the fusion of time. The tribunal therefore lacked the requisite jurisdiction to entertain it. The subject matter if the petition was outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal,” the court held.

While setting aside the majority ruling of the Tribunal that had sacked Diri as governor, the appellate court said it was trapped in the “web of nullity,” adding that
“it will smack of judicial sacrilege to allow the decision of the tribunal to stand.”

The Tribunal had, on August 17, voided the outcome of the Bayelsa state gubernatorial election, in a majority ruling by two of the three-man panel of justices.

Diri had, in his appeal, maintained that the majority judgement was manifestly against what he described as “the weight of evidence.”