Date Published: 04/23/09

Supreme Court adjourns Andy Uba’s suit

The Supreme Court, this morning, in Abuja, adjourned to a yet to be determined date, mid-way into the proceedings, in an appeal instituted by the former domestic aide to former president Olusegun Obasanjo, Chief Andy Uba, over his bid to validate his 2007 election, as Anambra state governor, which was nullified by the apex court.

The adjournment was occasioned by the request made by governor Peter Obi through his counsel for a full panel of the court to seat on the matter as against the present 5-man panel headed by Justice Katsina-Alu. Other members of the panel were Justices Dahiru Musdapher, Olufumilola Adekeye, Muhammad Coomasie and Chukwuma Eneh.

Counsel to governor Peter Obi, Chief Onyechi Ikpeazu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria , had drawn the attention of the court to a pending preliminary objection he filed challenging the competence of the appeal. Ikpeazu, in moving his preliminary objection to Andy Uba’s appeal, drew the attention of the court to the fact that what the former presidential aide was asking the apex court to do was sacrilegious and would only amount to scandalizing the image and reputation of the highest court of the land.

The senior advocate averred that the main relief of Andy Uba’s suit is an invitation for the court to set aside its own very decision, and maintained that  there can never be any other form of determination of the Uba matter as the Supreme Court had settled the issue once and for all. According to Chief Ikpeazu, “No court in Nigeria , including the Supreme Court itself, can embark on the determination of your earlier decision.”

Chief Andy Uba, in the main, is asking the apex court to hold that the proceedings which led to the decision of the Supreme Court, which struck out his first attempt to get the court to overrule itself, was defective at the Court of Appeal. Uba had been making spirited attempts to get the apex court to reinstate him as governor of Anambra state since he was sacked on  14 June, 2007, barely two weeks after he was sworn-in as the governor of the state.