The supreme court has affirmed Kefas Agbu as the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Taraba state.
In judgement on Friday, the apex court upheld the decision of the court of appeal sitting in Yola which dismissed two suits challenging the eligibility of Kefas to contest the party’s primary.
Dismissing the appeals filed by two governorship asprant – Hilkiah Buba-Joda and Jerome Nyameh, Justice Emmanuel Agim, who read the Supreme Court’s lead judgment, held that the appellants failed to explore internal party mechanisms to resolve the issues before approaching the court.
The judge said the appellants were in breach of Sections 84 and 87(9) of the electoral act by failing to make use of the primary election dispute mechanism in the party’s guidelines.
Agim said further that the failure of the appellants to include other aspirants who took part in the primary at the early stages of the trial robbed them of the right to a fair hearing.
The apex court, therefore, dismissed both appeals for being premature and lacking in merit.
“In the light of this, both appeals were deemed premature and lacking in merit as they were instituted without exploring the internal party options to seek redress before heading to court.
“Failure of the appellants to include other aspirants who took part in the primary at the early stages of the trial robbed them of rights to a fair hearing”, the apex court declared.
Agbu was declared the winner of the PDP governorship primary election which was held on May 25, after polling 443 votes out of the 517 votes cast.
