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Former Senate Leader, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN, has hailed the ruling of the Appeal Court, dismissing the suit instituted by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Senator Sandy Onor, the party’s candidate for the 2023 Cross River State governorship election, seeking the disqualification of the All Progressives Congress (APC) standard-bearer, Senator (Prince) Bassey Otu.
The legal luminary and ardent supporter of Otu’s guber ambition said the judgement was not unexpected as, according to him, there is no ambiguity in the law regarding the fact that a non-member of a political party has no locus standi to meddle into the affairs of the party and challenge what happens therein.
“The Court of Appeal verdict dismissing the case filed against the APC governorship candidate in Cross River State by the PDP and its candidate was a welcome development. The judgement was not unexpected because the law is clear. The law is very clear. And so, we expected nothing less. If you are not a member of a political party, you don’t have the right to complain of what transpires in the party. For us, this is another irritation out of the way of victory for Prince Bassey Otu come March 11, 2023,” Ndoma-Egba stated.
Onor and PDP had appealed the judgement of the lower court that threw out the suit seeking the disqualification of Otu, the APC guber flag bearer and his running mate, Rt. Hon. Peter Odey, on the grounds that Odey apart from not being a member of the APC was also a British citizen.
In a unanimous decision by the three justices of the Appellate Court, R.C Agbo, O.F Omoleye and B.B Aliyu, Justice O.F. Omoleye who delivered the judgement on behalf of others submitted that “The domestic affairs of a political party is an internal issue of that political party and the court will not dabble into the internal affairs of any political party.
“The issue of leadership and membership of political parties is an internal affair of a political party and the court will not interfere in it. The court therefore, cannot be dragged into the internal issue of if the 3rd defendant (Rt. Hon. Peter Odey) is a member of the 1st defendant (APC) or not. This therefore means that the action of the Appellants (Onor and PDP) is not justiceable. This matter is therefore struck out for lacking in merit and a cost of N500, 000 awarded against the Appellants.”
Prince Otu, believed to be the leading guber candidate in Cross River, was a member of the Green Chamber from 2003 to 2011, and represented Cross River South in the Red Chamber between 2011 and 2015, during which, he occupied different committee chairmanship positions, made valuable inputs to debates on national issues and meaningfully affected the lives of the people of his constituency with the execution of several projects and empowerment programmes
