Posted by The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sued President Muhammadu Buhari for telling the National Assembly to get rid of Section 84 of the Electoral Act 2022. On Wednesday, a Federal High Court in Abuja put off hearing the case until January 19, 2019.
Justice Inyang Ekwo set the date after the court heard that a similar case about the same Electoral Act is being heard at the Supreme Court.
James Ogwu Onoja SAN, the lawyer for the PDP, told the judge on Wednesday that the Apex Court had already ruled on the same issue that President Muhammadu Buhari and the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, had brought directly to the Apex Court.
Then, he asked the court to move forward with PDP’s case since the Supreme Court didn’t get into the heart of the matter but threw out Buhari’s case because it didn’t have the power to do so.
But later, the court was told that another case was pending at the Supreme Court on the same issue. The lawyers for the PDP asked Justice Ekwo to wait until the Supreme Court decided on the other case before hearing the PDP’s.
Based on what he knew, the lawyer for the PDP agreed that the court should put off hearing his client’s case until the Supreme Court rules on the main case.
In a short ruling, Justice Ekwo said that the Federal High Court should tread softly under the circumstances. He then set January 19 as the date to wait for the report of the Supreme Court’s decision on the electoral act.
Ogwu Onoja, on behalf of the PDP, sued President Muhammadu Buhari, the Attorney General of the Federation, and the President of the Senate over a move to change a part of the electoral act 2022 after the president had already signed it into law.
In the lawsuit, Onoja asked the court to rule that Buhari doesn’t have the power to say that Section 84 of the Electoral Act is unconstitutional and that he also doesn’t have the power to tell the National Assembly to get rid of Section 84 because he signed the whole Act into law.