A lawyer and politician, Ambrose Owuru has been fined N40 million by the Court of Appeal in Abuja for filing a case seeking to stop the ...
A lawyer and politician, Ambrose Owuru has been fined N40 million by the Court of Appeal in Abuja for filing a case seeking to stop the inauguration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as president of the country.
The respondents are President Muhammadu Buhari; the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Tinubu
A three-member panel of the appellate court yesterday held that the case by Owuru and Hope Democratic Party (HDP) amounted to an abuse of court process.
Justice Jamil Tukur, who read the lead judgment, said the issues in the case had earlier been determined by the court while sitting as an election petition court in the 2019 election.
Tukur said that the court also found that the Supreme Court had heard the matter and pronounced on it on October 28, 2019.
He argued that since the case had been litigated up to the Supreme Court, it was an abuse of the judicial process for Owuru and the HDP to seek its re-litigation.
The court said that the matter was an invitation to the court to review its earlier decision on similar matter but which it cannot do.
Tukur upheld the January 30 judgment by Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja which earlier dismissed the case for being an abuse of court process.
He proceeded to dismiss the appeal and ordered Owuru to pay each of the four respondents 10 million in cost.
The appeal by Owuru and HDP was against Ekwo’s judgment on the suit in which Owuru sought to be sworn in as Buhari’s successor.
Owuru claimed, among others, that he won a referendum purportedly conducted within the period of the postponement of the 2019 presidential election.
He argued that by the victory, he recorded in the 2019 referendum, no other person's should occupy the office of the President until he serves out his tenure.
Owuru and the HDP had raised similar issues in the petition they filed against the 2019 presidential election, which petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court for want of jurisdiction.
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