Politics

Appeal Court says Abang erred, affirms Ikpeazu as Abia gov

Published

8 years ago

August 18, 2016

Justice Okon Abang has been accused of wrongly handling the case involving Governor Okezie Ikpeazu and Uche Ogah over the governorship seat of Abia State.

This is as Governor Ikpeazu won the first appeal delivered by the Court of Appeal in Abuja on Thursday, with respect to the judgments of the Federal High Court in Abuja on June 27 removing him from office.

Ikpeazu had appealed against the ruling delivered by Justice Abang of the Federal High Court in Abuja on July 8 in which the judge insisted that he had jurisdiction to hear a motion for stay of execution of his earlier judgments delivered on June 27 even after the appeals against the judgments had been entered.

But the Justice Helen Ogunwumiju-led five-man bench, unanimously, agreed in their judgment that Justice Abang erroneously assumed jurisdiction to hear the motion and adjourned it till a later date.

Justice Philomina Ekpe, who read the lead judgment, argued that what Justice Abang should have done in line with time-honoured doctrine of “stari decisis” should have been to transfer the motion to the Court of Appeal for determination.

According to her, Justice Abang wrongly interpreted the provisions of Order 4(10) and (11) of the Court of Appeal rules, when he held that the said provisions were only applicable to an interlocutory ruling of the lower court and when a final judgment in a suit had been delivered.

Ekpe maintained that Justice Abang lacked jurisdictions to interpret the provisions of the Court of Appeal being the rules of a superior court.

Contributing also, Justice Ogunwumiju, held that Abang, “deliberately stood the law on its head” by justifying his jurisdiction to hear the motion when appeal has been entered.

A Federal High Court in Abuja presided over by Justice Abang had on June 27, asked Ikpeazu to vacate office immediately for submitting false tax information to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for its governorship primary in December 2014.

He then ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to immediately issue a certificate of return to the plaintiff, Uche Ogah, who polled the second highest number of votes in the primary.

By Ebere Ndukwu …

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