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The Supreme
Court has struck out a suit instituted by a former National Chairman of the
Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Audu Ogbeh, who is now a leader in the All
Progressives Congress, and some other leaders of his Otukpo community in Benue
State, seeking the restoration of the “suppressed” Otukpa Constituency seat in
the state House of Assembly.
The apex court
in its judgment on Friday nullified the judgments of the two lower courts which
had ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission to restore the
constituency.
Justice
Suleiaman Galadima, who delivered the lead judgment of the five-man panel,
struck out the suit and upheld the appeal filed by the INEC on the grounds that
the plaintiffs failed to institute the suit within three months of the said
excision and suppression of the constituency in 1996 but waited for 15 years to
complain about the alleged wrong.
Otukpa
Constituency was said to have elected its first representative to the state
House of Assembly in 1979 and subsequently elected two others to occupy the seat
until the constituency was “excised and suppressed” in 1996.
The number of
seats in the Benue State House of Assembly would have increased from 29 to 30 if
the suit had been successful at the apex court.
In dismissing
the suit in its unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court upheld INEC’s contention
that the suit instituted on October 25, 2011, about 15 years after the
constituency had been suppressed, had been caught by statute of
limitation.
Justice
Suleiman Galadima, who read the lead judgment, held that both the Makurdi
Divisions of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal were wrong to have
concurrently assumed jurisdiction in the suit when by virtue of section 2(a) of
the Public Officer’s Protection Act such action against public officers should
have been filed within three months when the alleged wrong was
done.
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