Imo supplementary election: Judge stalls APGA’s bid to stop INEC

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri

ABUJA- Spirited efforts by the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA and its governorship candidate, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, to invoke the original jurisdiction of a Federal High Court in Abuja and stop the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, from going ahead with its plans to conduct supplementary governorship election in Imo state tomorrow , may have amounted to an effort in futility, following the refusal of the trial judge to appear in court Thursday.

Though the acting Chief Judge of the High Court, Justice Ibrahim Auta, initially assigned trial Justice Donatus Okorowo to preside over the ex-parte application that was filed before the High Court by APGA, the case was later re-assigned to Justice Bilkisu Aliyu who failed to show up in court throughout today.

Though the court clerks waited in expectation that the presiding judge would turn-up for both the APGA case and several other matters originally slated on the court’s cause-list, they however packed their registers at about 4pm after it became evident that trial Justice Bilkisu would not anchor legal proceedings for the day.

With this development, the suit that was lodged at the high court by APGA as well as a similar one that was filed by five indigene of Imo state, seeking the cancellation of tomorrow ’s supplementary poll in four local government areas of the state might have been reduced to an academic exercise.

The other five Imo indigenes that equally approached the High Court with a view to quashing INEC’s bid to hold election in the state are  Chief Bob Njemanze, Kingsley Ihegworo, Chief Alan Onyemaechi, Nwokedi Jideofor and Emmanuel Ihim.

They are pleading the court to declare the planned supplementary governorship election in the state illegal and unconstitutional.

They specifically asked the High Court to go ahead and issue an interim injunction stopping the electoral body from conducting any other election in Imo state, insisting that the proposed supplementary election would amount to a gross violation of sections 25(7) and (8) of the Electoral Act, 2010, adding that such exercise was alien to both the Electoral Act and the 1999 Constitution.

They also pleaded the court to declare that 27th April, 2011, was the last day limited by the Electoral Act and the Constitution for the conduct of elections into the office of the governor of Imo State, contending that any election by whatever description conducted by INEC into the office of the governor outside the period limited by law would be unconstitutional and therefore of no effect whatsoever.

The plaintiffs asked the court to declare that any election by whatever description conducted by INEC into the office of the governor outside the period limited by law was unconstitutional and therefore of no effect.