Supreme Court dismisses ex-Buhari’s minister Nwajuba’s suit against Tinubu, Atiku

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a suit filed by a former Minister of State for Education, Emeka Nwajuba, for the disqualification of the presidential candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

A five-member panel of the court unanimously dismissed the suit after Mr Nwajiuba’s legal team withdrew the suit against Bola Tinubu of the APC and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP at Thursday’s proceedings.

The former minister had lost the case at both the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal as both courts concurrently ruled that it was statute-barred.

Mr Nwajiuba and 12 others  contested and lost the APC presidential primary election to Mr Tinubu in June last year.

The former minister, who was absent from the APC’s primary election in June 2022, polled only one vote.

In July 2022, he along with a group, Rights for All International, filed a suit for the disqualification of both Mr Tinubu and Atiku as the presidential candidates of their respective parties.

Their prayer was anchored on the grounds that APC and PDP candidates failed to disclose the sources of the funds with which they procured their parties’ nomination and expression of interest forms.

Mr Nwajiuba, who resigned his ministerial position in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led cabinet to contest the APC’s presidential primary, was the first aspirant to procure the party’s N100 million nomination and expression of interest forms.

In his suit, Mr Nwajiuba said he was the only presidential aspirant who met the requirement of section 90(3) of the Electoral Act, 2022 by disclosing the sources of the funds with which he purchased his APC nomination and expression of interest forms.

He said he produced a verifiable list of donors who donated between N500 to N500,000 for him to procure the APC’s forms conformed with the provision of the law.

According to him, both Mr Tinubu and Atiku failed to disclose their own sources of funding in violation of the law.

He therefore urged the court to disqualify the two candidates and declared him as the only qualified contestant at the APC primary.

He urged the court to also declare his vote as the only lawful and valid vote scored at the convention and declare him as the candidate of the APC for the 2023 presidential election.

The judge, Z.B Abubakar, dismissed the suit in a judgement on 23 November, 2022.

The judge agreed with the contention in the preliminary objections filed by Mr Tinubu’s lawyer, Babatunde Ogala, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, and other defence lawyers that Mr Nwajiuba’s suit was statute-barred.

The judge held that by virtue of the provisions of section 285(9) of the Nigerian constitution, the suit ought to have been filed within 14 days after the primary elections of the parties.

Displeased with the Federal High Court’s decision, Mr Nwajiuba appealed to the Court of Appeal in Abuja in January.

A three-member panel of the appellate court, in a judgement delivered on 15 February, upheld the decision of the Federal High Court by similarly dismissing the former minister’s suit.

The court also awarded one million naira cost against the former minister and in favour of the respondents.

Still dissatisfied, Mr Nwajiuba, appealed to the Supreme Court.

But when the matter came up for hearing on Thursday, his legal team opted to withdraw it.

Inyang Okoro, who led a five-member panel of the court, went on to dismiss the suit.

“Upon the application for withdrawal by the appellant’s counsel and without any objection from the respondent’s counsel, the appeal is dismissed,” the court ruled.

Mr Tinubu went on to win the 25 February presidential election after defeating Atiku and 16 other candidates.

But Atiku as well as the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and others have disputed the outcome of the election. They have filed separate petitions to challenge the outcome.