A Federal High Court in Abuja is to rule today whether candidate of the All Progressive Congress for the Saturday Governorship election, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola is eligible to contest the election slated for Saturday.
A former Secretary to the state government under the previous administration, Alhaji Moshood Adeoti, had dragged Oyetola to court alleging he was not validly nominated as the candidate of the party.
Justice Inyang Ekwo had fixed the date for the rulingafter the counsel for the parties had adopted their processes and presented their arguments in the case. Adeoti, one of the aspirants who contested the APC ticket, went to court after the party’s primary held on February 19, 2022, and challenged the emergence of Mr Oyetola as the candidate.
The plaintiff, through his legal team, led by Chiesonu Okpoko, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, is praying that the court should nullify Mr Oyetola’s candidacy on the grounds that the incumbent governor contested in the poll as a member of the party’s Caretaker Extraordinary and Convention Planning Committee (CECPC).
According to him, the act contravened the provisions of Section 222 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) and Article 31(iii) of the APC, October 2014 (as amended).
He added in the suit that Oyetola ought to have resigned his membership of the APC’s CECPC and leave office as an officer of the party at least 30 days prior to the date of the party’s primary election.