The election of Dr. Alex Otti, the incumbent governor of Abia State, and all other candidates running on the Labor Party’s ticket in the states of Abia and Kano has been declared invalid by a Federal High Court sitting in Kano and presided over by Justice M N Yunusa.
The court determined that their ascension did not follow the guidelines of the 2022 Electoral Act.
Obasanjonews24 was able to receive a copy of the court’s ruling on Friday morning.
The Labour Party’s failure to submit its membership register to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, within 30 days before their primaries renders the process invalid, according to the court in Suit No. FHC/KN/CS/107/2023 brought by Mr. Ibrahim Haruna Ibrahim against the Labour Party and INEC.
The Judge held that the votes given to the first defendant were squandered because “the party that has not complied with the provisions of the electoral act cannot be said to have a candidate in an election and cannot be declared winner of an election.”
According to Obasanjonews24, the Labour Party said on Wednesday that a “breakaway group” of the party headed by acting national chairman Lamidi Apapa had gone to court in Kano State to ask for the party’s recent electoral successes to be thrown out.
The Labour Party has been informed of an illegal attempt by a breakaway group in the party led by Lamidi Apapa to influence a Kano state High court to invalidate all the elections won by the Labour Party in the recently concluded general election, according to the LP’s acting National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, who first raised the alarm in a statement.
The party spokesperson claimed that “the suspended National Legal Adviser and a key member of the disgraced Apapa group, Samuel Akingbade Oyelekan, on Wednesday, while the Presidential Appeal Tribunal was sitting in Abuja with all eyes on it, clandestinely sneaked out of Abuja to Kano state 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 national elections”
Akingbade, who identified himself as speaking for the Labour Party, did not object to the motion, forcing the judge to postpone making a decision until Thursday (yesterday), he said.
Ifoh continued by requesting that the judiciary and all law enforcement bodies, including the police and the Department of State Services, DSS, notice that Akingbade and Apapa’s supporters no longer serve as representatives of the party.
