Appeal Court, sitting in Ilorin, Tuesday, upturned the ruling of Kwara State High Court which pronounced Ishola Balogun-Fulani as the authentic party chairman in the state.
The Ibrahim Saulawa led three-man panel said the high court ruling was built on nothing as the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the Balogun-Fulani’s case challenging his dismissal as the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chairman in the state.
Having last week ruled in an interlocutory appeal that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear Balogun-Fulani’s case, the appeal court allowed the APC’s main appeal but dismissed the ‘sister appeal’ by Bolarinwa because it amounted to a “mere academic exercise”.
The court said it would amount to a waste of time ruling on the Bashiru Bolarinwa appeal since the issues in it were similar to the ones in the main appeal filed by the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee of the APC.
Bolarinwa is a co-applicant in the appeal filed by the APC NWC.
However, the appeal court struck out all the orders earlier granted by the lower court because the court lacked the jurisdiction to issue such reliefs.
The appeal court held that the lower court lacked jurisdiction to hear the matter because various conditions precedent were not met, saying the court had acted in error to hear it at all.
The appeal court position effectively affirmed Bashiru Bolarinwa as the authentic chairman of the party in the state, upholding the position of the APC National Working Committee, NWC, which had expelled Balogun-Fulani and members of his state executive committee from the party.
This judgment came exactly one week after the appeal court — in an interlocutory appeal — upheld the nomination of AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as the APC governorship candidate in Kwara.
The court had contended in the judgment that the state executive committee of a party is only an appendage of its national headquarters and is not imbued with the powers to conduct primaries for national elections.
