Yakubu Busari
The Court of Appeal on Monday voided a ruling that Dr. Patrick Dakum the current Labour Party, LP, ticket holder motion seeking for extension of time to enable him to join the appeal for filling out of the stipulated five days.
Justice Tobi in his unanimous bench ruling delivered that the respondent (Dr Patrick Dakum) application sought through his counsel, Edward G. Pwajok (SAN) seeking the order of the court to file processes was rejected.
The application dated the 1st January 2023 attached with 4 paragraphs, written address and affidavit can’t scale through.
The motion was moved by the Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, and was adopted with the written address with 3 grounds where the respondent complained that due to poor internet connection, affected the filing brief of argument within time.
The judge explained further that whether the application was anchored on preelection or election matters it has already breached the court proceedings which had discredited the preelection guidelines indeed for required timing.
However, justice Tobi disclosed that the appeal court can’t create space for extension, and the parties pain for their failure, and the court is dissatisfied with its proceedings against judicial pronouncement in a practice direction.
He stressed that in judicial pronouncement if any party didn’t comply with the scheduled time frame that party shall not be entertained with any brief after the expiration of 5 days guidelines whether the issue on the ground is preelection or election, they must be strict to time governing them which is sacrosanct.
Tobi said,” in the strength of the above complicity, this application can’t fly because the registrars of the court are on the ground to attend to all matters of litigation.
We make sure that court is open for candidates to file so we unanimously dismissed the motion for filing out of time governing the appeal court in Nigeria “.
Speaking shortly after the ruling, Barr. Opeyemi George Ojo told journalists that a Federal High Court dismissed the case of his client Amb.Yohanna Yilpwan Margif who he said is the authentic candidate of the LP in Plateau State.
He said, that Margif approached the appeal court to challenge his illegal substitution by INEC which was done by replacing him with the 2nd respondent Dr. Patrick Dakum.
Ojo explains that they objected that the substitution was filed out of time after adopting their processes seeking for extension of time telling the court that they shouldn’t be given the privilege because the issues are so generic and they must obey the court order.
According to him, if any person will sit down after 10 years and come back to the court that is an absolute abuse of the court process and we adopt our brief of argument.
Ojo stated that we drew the attention of the court over her judgment but the learned silk argued it when the court carefully looked at the collected it.
However, Puttu raised concern about the locus standing but when I was about to reply him, he suddenly change his minds and consequently, the appellate court struck out the case.
