The Port Harcourt division of the Court of Appeal has upheld a high court order that voided the Rivers State All Progressives Congress (APC) ward, local government, and state congresses which established the executive committee led by Tony Okocha.
As a reminder, Justice Godswill Obomanu of the Rivers State High Court issued an ex parte order on December 20, 2024, blocking the APC from organizing its congresses across the state.
The party ignored the directive and held the congresses anyway, which ultimately led to the installation of Tony Okocha as state chairman alongside other executives.
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Unhappy with the injunction, Okocha approached the appellate court under appeal number CA/PH/523/2026. He contended that the high court lacked the necessary jurisdiction over the dispute and was not legally authorized to grant the restraining order.
However, delivering the appellate court’s verdict, Justice Elfreida Williams-Dawodu JCA validated the high court’s jurisdiction to issue the directive and dismissed Okocha’s appeal due to a lack of competence.
Validating the ruling, the legal counsel representing the Emeka Beke-led faction of the APC, Emenike Ebete, explained the situation.
“An appeal was filed by Tony Okocha exco against the order of Justice Obomanu that nullified the congresses that were conducted by APC while the matter was in court. Now, before those congresses were conducted, the court gave an ex parte order restraining them from conducting those congresses. They disobeyed the order of court, went ahead and conducted local government, state, and ward congresses. So we went back to the high court and prayed that those congresses be nullified, having disobeyed the court order, and the court nullified the congresses,” Ebete stated.
Elaborating further, the lawyer noted that Okocha’s legal team had hoped to dissolve the lower court’s entire intervention by attacking its baseline authority.
“They appealed to the court of appeal against the ex parte order, and in that appeal they were saying that the court has no jurisdiction to make any order at all and that the court should strike out the suit for want of jurisdiction. If that had happened, then the order nullifying the congresses would’ve all gone,” he observed.
“That appeal was dismissed because the court said the appeal was incompetent. We’ve not gotten the full text of the judgment, but the good news is that the court said their appeal was incompetent. and struck it out, meaning that the order the high court made nullifying their congresses still stands,” Ebete concluded.
He nonetheless made it clear that this specific appeal bears no connection to a separate ruling by Justice Sika Aprioku, which previously removed Tony Okocha and his team from the helms of the Rivers State APC leadership.
In an immediate response to the development, the Okocha-led faction strongly disputed the decision of the Court of Appeal.
In an official dispatch bearing the signature of the publicity secretary, Chibike Ikenga, the camp confirmed it has put in a request to obtain a certified true copy of the judicial verdict.
“We have applied for the judgement of the Court of Appeal delivered today. Once the copy of the judgement is made available, our lawyers will address us on the next line of action,” the statement read.
