Stakeholders and members of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) are being gripped by anxiety in anticipation a judgement as the Supreme Court rules today on the leadership tussle in the party.
The Supreme Court, on Monday, fixed March 24 to decide on the leadership crisis hitting, APGA.
A five-member panel of the apex court adjourned to rule on a motion that was brought before it by a factional National Chairman of the party, Chief Edozie Njoku.
Attempt to speak with a founder of APGA, Chief Chekwas Okorie, was fruitless. He declined comment saying in a response to our inquiries,
“My brother, I prefer to await the outcome of the motion of APGA inviting the Apex to correct the ‘slip and tongue’ contained in the judgment of the Supreme Court delivered on 14th October, 2021. To avoid being accused of attempt to preempt the Court, l rather comment after the ruling by the Court on 24/03/2023. Please bear with me”.
Njoku had in an application he filed through his team of lawyers led by Mr. Chike Onyemenam, SAN, urged the apex court to correct a typographical error in its judgement, which he said wrongly handed the leadership of the party to Chief Victor Oye.
He, Njoku noted that the Supreme Court had in a letter it wrote to him on January 19, wherein it addressed him as the National Chairman of APGA, asked him to approach it by way of a motion to regularize the said judgement.
Therefore, relying on Order 8 Rule 16 of the Supreme Court Rules, Njoku re-approached the court to correct the typographical error and slip in the lead judgment of the Court in the appeal that was presided over and delivered by Justice Mary Peter-Odili (rtd), on October 14, 2021.
He is specifically praying the apex court to correct an accidental slip at Page 13, lines 3 to 4 of its judgment, where instead of writing the name of ‘Edozie Njoku’ who was unlawfully removed from his position as the person that was validly elected as National Chairman of APGA at the convention the party held at Oweriri in 2019, mistakenly inserted the name of Victor Oye, who was not a party in the substantive suit that gave rise to the appeal.
News Express can recall that the police had earlier dragged the Appellant before a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, alleging that he forged a judgement of the apex court.
The police, in the charge marked: CR/12/2022, told the court that Njoku presented the said forged judgement as genuine, with the intention of misleading the public and ridiculing the judiciary.
He was further accused of forging the letterhead paper of Justice Odili who had since retired from the apex court bench.
However, the factional APGA Chairman pleaded not guilty to the charge, and approached the Supreme Court to exonerate himself.
The party currently has three factions.
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