Court rejects sacked AA chair’s appeal

A three-member panel of the appellate court in Abuja led by its president, Justice Monica, has struck out an appeal by the sacked chairman of the Action Alliance party, Chief Kenneth Udeze.

The appeal which sought to reverse the nullification of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha’s candidacy and others was on Thursday ruled to be incompetent by Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem.

In the lead ruling, Justice Dongban-Mensem held that Udeze was wrong to have initiated the appeal in the name of Action Alliance and also listed the party as a respondent.

The appeal sought to void the December 22 ruling by the Federal High Court in Abuja.
In the appeal marked CA/ABJ/PRE/ROA/CV/1472MI/2022, the Justice pointed out that the AA could not be an appellant and a respondent in the same appeal.

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Prior, on November 4,2022 Justice Abubakar had ordered INEC to accept the list of candidates submitted to it by the Omo-Aje leadership of the AA and to disregard the list submitted by Udeze, of which Major Hamzat Al-Mustpha was a presidential candidate.

Ruling on December 22, Justice Zainab Abubakar of the Federal High Court, Abuja rejected Udeze’s application to set aside the November 4 judgment which recognized the candidates produced by the Dr. Adekunle Rufai Omo-Aje leadership of the party.

During the ruling, it was noted that Udeze’s suspension and expulsion as the AA Chairman had been upheld in two courts of Appeal ruling

Justice Abubakar noted that, with the two subsisting judgments of the Court of Appeal and another decision by a Federal High Court in Abeokuta, Udeze cannot lawfully claim the chairmanship of the party.

The judge described Udeze as a meddlesome interloper, trying to interfere in the affairs of the party from which he was expelled, and stated that her previous ruling on November 4 was not obtained by fraud as Udeze claimed.

The two judgments of the appellate court were delivered on January 7 and November 11, 2022.