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INEC to withdraw the Certificate of Return earlier issued to Senator Stephen Odey.
Senator Stephen Odey has lost another bid to reclaim his seat as the lawmaker representing Cross River North Senatorial District in the National Assembly.
He suffered his second loss on Saturday when the Court of Appeal in Abuja dismissed his application, asking the court to review its earlier judgement which declared Jarigbe Agom as the right candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the December 2020 by-election in the senatorial district.
In its ruling, a panel of five justices unanimously dismissed Senator Odey’s application, saying it was an abuse of court processes.
The court also said the appeal was brought in bad faith and ordered him to pay N1 million as a consequential cost to the first, second, and third respondents to the suit.
The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, led four other justices to rule on the appeal.
On July 30, the appellate court in Calabar declared Jarigbe as the right PDP candidate and the duly elected lawmaker representing Cross River North senatorial district.
It set aside the ruling of the National and State House of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal delivered on June 18 which ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to withdraw the Certificate of Return earlier issued to Jarigbe and issue the same to Odey.
The court had also invalidated the Certificate of Return issued to Odey by the electoral umpire and directed the electoral empire to withdraw it.
Dissatisfied with the ruling of the appellate court, Odey approached the Abuja Division of the appeal court to reclaim his seat.
He asked the appeal court in Abuja to review and set aside the ruling delivered in Calabar, insisting that Jarigbe did not participate in all the processes that led to the by-election as required by the law.
Jarigbe’s counsel, Emmanuel Ukala, on the other hand, cited Order 20 Rule 4 of the Procedural Rules of the appeal court, saying the court cannot sit over an appeal in its own judgment.
