A
Federal High Court sitting in Abuja and presided over by Justice Okon
Abang, who has been notable for some controversial judgments in recent
times, has sacked two House of Representatives members.
The
members who are from Enugu State are Stella Ngwu from
Igbo-Etiti/Uzo-Uwani Federal Constituency and Dennis Nnmachi Agbo from
Igbo-Eze North/Udenu Federal Constituency.
The
court asked them to vacate their seats immediately on alleged wrongful
emergence as flagbearers of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the
2015 general elections.
Their
political rivals had in separate suits later merged by the court,
argued that Stella Ngwu and Denis Agbo’s emergence as flagbearers of the
party were illegal, on the reason that they were not elected delegates
to represent the party at its congress held on November 1 2014.
The
1st and 2nd defendants in the suits were the PDP and its National
Working Committee (NWC) while the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) was the 3rd defendant. The 4th defendants in the two
separate suits were Ms Ngwu and Mr Agbo.
They
had urged the court to declare the election of the fourth defendants
null and void and Abang, in his judgment, declared Gabriel Okafor as the
rightful winner of Igbo-Eze North/Udenu Federal Constituency seat
election and Chijioke Ugwu, as winner of the Egbo-Eze North/Udenu
Federal Constituency in Enugu State in 2015.
He
held that the PDP and its NWC had no right or authority to use any
delegate list for the election of its candidate for Igbo-Etiti/Uzo-Uwani
and Igbo-Eze North/Udenu Federal Constituencies, respectively, other
than the list of delegates that emerged at congresses held on November
1, 2014.
Abang
had a week ago, in a ruling many consider controversial, held that
Jimoh Ibrahim was the rightful governorship candidate of the PDP for the
forthcoming Ondo gubernatorial election and ordered INEC to replace the
name of Eyitayo Jegede with that of Ibrahim.
It
was Abang who also gave the ruling that sacked Governor Okezie Ikpeazu
of Abia State and ordered that Uche Ogah be sworn-in as the governor of
Abia. The ruling was later faulted by the Appeal Court.
Also, in his judgement on Sheriff’s suit against the National Convention of the PDP slated to hold on August 17,
in Port Harcourt Rivers State, he had ruled in favour of Sheriff and
ordered Nigerian Police to stop the convention as scheduled, even when a
Federal High Court in Port Harcourt had earlier sanctioned the
convention.
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