The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed an appeal filed by the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) governorship candidate in Bayelsa State, Ndutimi Alaibe, in his bid to unseat the state Governor Douye Diri.
Alaibe who is a former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), had, by his appeal, sought to, among others, set aside the judgment of the Court of Appeal, which upheld the declaration of Diri as the winner of the governorship primary of the party held on September 3, 2019, for lacking in merit.
The PDP stalwart had argued that the party’s guidelines did not permit chairmen and councillors elected within 90 days to the election to vote during governorship primary.
At the mention of the appeal yesterday, a five-man panel of the apex court, led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour, identified some other defects in the appeal and concluded that it did not fall within the purview of a pre-election matter but an internal affair of a political party, which it has no jurisdiction to entertain, therefore held that the appeal was without merit.
Realising the observations of the court, Alaibe’s lawyer, Ifedayo Adedipe (SAN), applied to withdraw the appeal, following which the apex court dismissed it.
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