The African Democratic Congress (ADC) on Monday “challenged the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja to hear a suit seeking to sack the Senator David Mark-led interim leadership of the party.”
In a “preliminary objection” filed by its legal team, the ADC maintained that the suit was “filed in bad faith” and was an “abuse of the judicial process.”
The party argued that the case, which concerns its internal affairs, is “non-justiciable.”
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The ADC stated that “the courts in Nigeria, including the apex court, have held consistently that matters touching on leadership of political parties are off the jurisdiction of our courts and hence non-justiciable.”
The party also added that “The courts do not have the requisite statutory vires to interfere in or with political decisions by political parties.”
The court session, which was set for the Senator Mark-led leadership to appear to show why INEC should not be barred from recognizing them, was deferred.
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The judge, Justice Emeka Nwite, noted that while the plaintiff’s counsel claimed to have served all processes, the “service copy on the court’s file was blank.”
The judge held that the law requires personal service on each respondent, not just the political party.
The case was deferred until September 30 to allow the plaintiff to serve all parties.
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The plaintiff, a former Deputy National Chairman of the party, Nafiu Bala Gombe, had sought an “interim injunction” to “restrain the Senator Mark-led faction from further parading themselves as leaders of the party.”
His motion specifically prayed for “An order of interim injunction restraining the 4th defendant from recognizing the 2nd and 3rd defendants as the National Chairman and National Secretary, their agents and privies of the 1st defendant/respondent herein, pending the hearing of the motion on notice hereby filed in this matter.”
The lawsuit was filed days after INEC updated its records to reflect the Senator Mark-led leadership.
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