Nigeria’s ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), has vowed to return to the Supreme Court to contest the disqualification of the party from contesting in Zamfara state in the 2019 general elections.
The APC said this through its lawyer, Robert Clerk, after the Supreme Court refused the party’s request regarding its participation in the elections for the second time on Monday.
Speaking after the court ruling Monday, Clerk, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said the decision “cannot mean the end of the road for his party, as their application was never heard in its merits.”
“Our attention has been drawn to the fact that there were five judgments and we only produced one of the five. It therefore does not fall within the rules of the court to listen to us. So, the matter was never taken on its merits. What the court said is that we have not tidied ourselves up properly.
“We have taken note of that. We will go back to the drawing board again since the matter was only struck out. It was never taken on its merits, we will come back,” Mr Clerk said.
He added that his clients would consider the recommendations of the court and return after getting the five copies of the judgment delivered on May 24.
Mr Clerk said that the APC approached the apex court a second time to contest the consequential orders made during the judgment in May, “because his clients believed that the apex court lacked jurisdiction to make the said consequential orders at the time.”
The court had in a decision earlier taken in May ruled against the APC’s application principally because it agreed with the decision of the Court of Appeal, Sokoto Division, which decided that the APC did not conduct a valid primary ahead of the elections.
Owing to the party’s internal wrangling, the APC in Zamfara state formed two parallel factions ahead of the deadline for the conduct of primaries for the 2019 elections.
While a faction of the state’s APC was led by ex-Governor Abdulazeez Yeri, the other faction was led by a Senator Kabiru Marafa.
