Delta guber: More trouble for Ogboru as court quashes APC primary election

Paul Osuyi, Asaba

Barely one month that a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State sacked the state executive committee of the All Progressive Congress (APC) with Jones Erue as chairman, the governorship primary of the party held on September 30, 2018, has also been quashed.

The contentious primary election produced Chief Great Ogboru as the governorship candidate of the party for the March 9, 2019 election.

But one of the aspirants and former speaker of the state House of Assembly, Victor Ochei, expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of the exercise, and subsequently approached the court, seeking a cancellation of the primary election.

Ochei prayed the court, among others, to invalidate the results of the Delta State APC governorship primary election on the grounds that the delegates’ list used for the exercise was not envisaged by consent judgment, and that aspirants did not get any advanced list of delegates prior to the APC primaries.

Delivering judgment on Thursday in Asaba, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba ordered the cancellation of the APC governorship primaries that produced Ogboru.

Justice Dimgba granted four out of the five reliefs sought by the plaintiff and held that relief Number 4 could not be granted due to the effusion of time.

“All the reliefs sought in this suit are similar with those for which Justice Adegoke pronounced judgment on, so I grant reliefs 1, 2, 3 and 5. But relief 4 is refused because the governorship election is over and the relief is spent,” the Court held.

In arriving at the judgment, Justice Dimgba said the Federal High Court has one jurisdiction and as such cannot be seen giving discordant judgment.

“Having considered the decisions reached by the Federal High Court in the case of Cyril Ogodo which has similar reliefs and the fact that some of the defendants in this suit were the same, the court has decided to follow the decisions arrived at in the Ogodo case,” he further held.

It would be recalled that Justice Toyin Adegoke had last month in a judgment sacked the Erue-led Delta State APC executive, and voided all actions the said executive committee took on behalf of the party.