A’Court Dismisses Former Presidential Candidate’s Suit against Tinubu’s Inauguration

Alex Enumah in Abuja

The Court of Appeal, Abuja on Thursday  dismissed the appeal by a former Presidential candidate, Chief Ambrose Albert Owuru, for being incompetent and lacking in merit.

The court in a unanimous judgment also ordered the appellant to pay a total of N40 million cost to the four respondents in the appeal.

According to the justices, Owuru’s suit seeking to stop the inauguration of the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu on May 29, was frivolous, vexatious and a waste of the court’s time.

The respondents which President Muhammadu Buhari, Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Tinubu respectively are to be paid N10 million each as cost of litigation.

Justice Jamil Tukur who read the lead judgment of the three man panel of the court held that the grievances of Owuru against the 2019 presidential election was not only strange but uncalled for because the grievances had been pursued up to Supreme Court and was dismissed for want of merit.

Justice Tukur said that the action of Owuru to resuscitate the case that died since 2019 at the Supreme Court was aimed at making the lower courts to go on collision course with supremacy of the Apex Court.

The court accordingly affirmed the judgment of a Federal High Court, Abuja ,delivered on January 30, 2023, by Justice Inyang Ekwo, which earlier dismissed the case for being an abuse of court process.

Owuru had in the suit claime, that he won a referendum purportedly conducted within the period of the postponement of the 2019 presidential election and as such ought to be declared as president.

He argued that by the victory he recorded in the 2019 referendum, no other person should occupy the office of the president until he serves out his tenure.

Owuru and the HDP raised similar issues in the petition they filed against the 2019 presidential election, which petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court for want of jurisdiction.

The election petition court, while dismissing Owuru’s petition in its August 22, 2029 judgment, held among others that issue of referendum raised in the petition did not form a ground to challenge the outcome of an election.