S’Court Dismisses Suit Seeking Tinubu’s Removal as President, Fines Plaintiff N5m

Alex Enumah in Abuja

The Supreme Court, yesterday, dismissed a suit seeking the removal of President Bola Tinubu from office, for being frivolous and vexatious.

A five-member panel of the apex court in a judgement, held that the suit brought by a former presidential candidate of the Hope Democratic Party (HDP), Chief Albert Owuru, was not only incompetent and lacking in merit but amounted to a waste of the court’s precious time.

The panel led by Justice Uwani Musa Aba-Aji, subsequently ordered the appellant to pay the president the sum of N5 million as cost for defending the incompetent suit.

Besides, the apex court ordered its registry not to accept any frivolous originating summons from Owuru again.

Owuru and the HDP, had in a petition filed on March 7, 2019 canvassed nullification of the election of President Muhammadu Buhari on three grounds.

That they were unlawfully excluded in the poll, that the February 23 poll was illegal, unconstitutional and a nullity, because INEC has no power to shift the poll and that a referendum conducted on February 16 produced him as winner.

But the presidential election tribunal of 2019 and the Supreme Court dismissed the petition and appeal for being incompetent and lacking in merit.

Not satisfied, Owuru again came last year with a fresh suit challenging the inauguration of President Bola Tinubu as winner of the 2023 presidential election.

He predicated his action on the grounds that a suit over the rightful occupant of the seat of power remains pending at the Supreme Court.

Owuru had claimed that by the doctrine of ‘Lis Pendens’, it is not yet the turn of Tinubu to occupy the Office of President of Nigeria, adding that the doctrine of Lis Pendens has rendered the 2023 presidential election as well as its outcome illegal and an exercise in futility.

In the suit, marked SC/CV/667/2023, Owuru prayed the apex court to sack Tinubu on two major grounds: alleged non-qualification to hold office as Nigeria’s President and alleged usurpation of the office in contravention of the law.