S’Court Dismisses PDP’s Application to Remove Tambuwal

Tobi Soniyi in Abuja
The Supreme Court  has dismissed application by the Sokoto State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its governorship candidate, Senator Abdallah Wali, to join as parties in a suit filed by a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Umaru Dahiru, challenging the nomination of Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal as the candidate of APC in the April 2015 election.

 Justice Sulaiman Galadima, who presided at the hearing of the PDP and Wali’s  application to join the appeal, described the applicants as interlopers who should not take part in a matter purely involving another party.

Even though the state PDP had announced that they would not challenge the election of Tambuwal in 2015, they however, through case number SC/67/2016, sought to be joined as parties in Dahiru’s suit on the grounds that if the suit succeeded, Wali should be declared winner of the election.

In their application  to join the appeal, Wali and PDP contended that having participated in the 2015 governorship election, and having scored the next highest number of votes cast after that of Tambuwal, they had sufficient grounds to be joined in the case.

They said the reliefs sought by Dahiru would have an effect on the outcome of the Sokoto governorship election by creating a vacuum.
“That the vacuum likely to be created by the success of the appellant’s appeal can only be filled by the applicant who scored the next highest returned votes,” they argued.

Justice Galadima however struck out the application, foreclosing any move by the PDP to get APC removed from power in Sokoto through the back door.
No date yet has been set for hearing on the interlocutory appeal filed by Senator Umar Dahiru challenging the ruling of the Appeal Court which held that his case at the Federal High Court against Tambuwal’s emergence as APC candidate for the April 2015 governorship election could not proceed since it had been overtaken by events and had become an academic exercise.