Supreme court strikes out HDP’s appeal against Buhari

The supreme court has struck out the appeal of Hope Democratic Party (HDP) and Ambrose Owuru,  its presidential candidate.

HDP and its presidential candidate had appealed the decision of the presidential election petitions tribunal which threw out its petition and upheld the election of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The five-man panel led by Mary Odili on Thursday struck it out on the grounds that more than one notice of appeal was filed by the appellants in the same appeal.

“The two notices of appeal filed by the appellants and jointly utilised, is a procedure not backed by law and cannot be used,” Odili said.

The panel also held that the appellants failed to appeal against the ruling delivered by the tribunal on August 22 which struck out their petition based on the lack of jurisdiction.

“Rather the appellants have come here to tackle the decision on the merits which the court below handled out of the abundance of caution,” she said.

The court said the petition was properly struck out by the tribunal and therefore, “there is no appeal”.

Wole Olanipekun, counsel to Buhari; Yunus Usman, counsel to INEC; and Lateef Fagbemi, counsel to the All Progressives Congress (APC); while adopting their preliminary objections, all argued that the appeal filed by the appellants is an abuse of court process having filed two notices of appeal.

In response, Isaac Udoka, HDP counsel argued that only one notice was filed on August 28. He said that which was filed on September 2 was “additional grounds of appeal”.