Breaking: Supreme Court declines to dismiss Imo Gov Uzodinma from office

Tuesday, the Supreme Court did not remove Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State from her job.
A seven-person court panel led by Justice Inyang Okoro threw out an application to remove Uzodinma from office on the grounds that the All Progressives Congress (APC) did not legitimately select him to run for the election that led to his first term in 2019.
The application also tried to call into question the years Uzodinma was governor of Imo state.

The first person to bring the appeal to the highest court was Mr. Uche Nwosu, who was the governorship candidate for the Action Alliance (AA) in the 2019 election. However, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its winner, Emeka Ihedioha, asked to be added as interested parties in the case.

In particular, the PDP and Ihedioha asked the Supreme Court to uphold its 2019 decision that Nwosu was not eligible to run for office because he was named by both the AA and the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The people who were appealing said that if the highest court agreed that Nwosu was the APC candidate, then it was illegal for it to then fire Ihedioha and say that Uzodinma, who was also backed by the APC, was the real winner of the governorship election.

So, the PDP asked the highest court to put its candidate, Ihedioha, back in office, since the APC couldn’t support two candidates in the election.

Adedamola Farokun, PDP, said in an affidavit (deposed to by a lawyer) that the third respondent/applicant (PDP) is not asking for a review of the valid, current, and well-thought-out judgment this court made in this appeal in 2019 or the judgment this court made on January 14, 2020 in SC/462/2019. Instead, the PDP is humbly asking that this court follow through with its decision.

“This court has the constitutional, inherent, and legal power to grant the reliefs asked for and carry out its decision.”
The defendant, Farokun, said that Uzodinma was not the APC’s candidate because the court had said that Nwosu was the candidate of both the APC and the AA.

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APC and AA did not sponsor or field any candidates for the governorship election held in Imo State on March 9, 2019, according to the PDP. This is because the appellant/respondent was nominated by both parties and was later disqualified as their gubernatorial candidate, as found by this honorable court in its judgment.

In its argument, it said that Governor Uzodinma should not be accepted as the legally elected governor of Imo State because he did not run for office as an independent candidate.

The applicants said that the recent election in the state on November 11 was invalid because Ihedioha had not yet finished his term.
The issue was brought up again on Tuesday, but the highest court said it didn’t have the power to hear the appeal because it was pointless and very annoying.

The high court then fined Chief Mike Ozehkome, SAN, N40 million for his part in the case as a lawyer for the PDP and Ihedioha.

The case was strangely kept on the top court’s docket for over three years. It was supposed to be heard in October, but it was pushed back until after Uzodinma’s recent re-election as governor of the state.