The Court of Appeal has dismissed a suit challenging the qualification of President Muhammadu Buhari to contest the 2019 general election. A three-man panel led by Justice Atinuke Akomolafe-Wilson threw out the suit today for being incompetent.
The court agreed with counsel to the President and the All Progressive Congress (APC) that the suit was statute barred, having not been filed within the mandatory period stipulated by the law for a pre-election matter to be filed.
Applicants in the suit – Kalu Kalu, Labaran Ismail and Hassy El-Kuris – had approached the appellate court to nullify the judgment of the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court which declined to hear their suit instituted to challenge the educational qualification of President Buhari before the conduct of the 2019 general election.
They told the court that President Buhari was not educationally qualified to have stood for the presidential poll. But Justice Ahmed Mohammed of the Federal High Court threw out the suit on the grounds that the question regarding the certificate of a candidate was a pre-election matter.
He had held that the suit filed by the appellants did not meet the constitutional requirements for filing such a suit. The judge, thereafter, threw out the suit for lacking in merit. When the matter came up at the appellate court today, the panel of judges affirmed the position of the lower court.
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