Obanikoro asks court to dismiss eligibility suit

A former Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obaniko, on Tuesday asked a Lagos State High Court in Ikeja to dismiss a suit seeking to pronounce him ineligible to contest election into any political office in Nigeria.
The applicants are members of the Peoples Democratic Party, namely: Micheal Ogun, Suleiman Saheed and Wasiu Odusan.
Joined as respondents are Obanikoro, the PDP and the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The applicants had, in an earlier ex parte application, specifically asked Justice Kazeem Alogba to restrain Obanikoro from contesting the just concluded governorship primary of the PDP in Lagos State.
But Justice Kazeem Alogba rather than restrain Obanikoro from contesting the primary,  ordered the applicants to put him on notice and adjourned till Tuesday.
Obanikoro, however, lost the primary conducted on Monday to his prime contender, Mr. Jimi Agbaje.
At the resumed proceeding on Tuesday, Obanikoro responded with a preliminary objection filed through his counsel, Mr. Gbenga Ojo.
The applicants has asked  the court to declare that  Obanikoro was ineligible to stand any form of election in the country, having allegedly had past history of unvisited crime.

Among other documents tendered before the court as exhibits was an American passport said to belong to Obanikoro but obtained under a false name.
There was also an international passport said to belong to the ex-minister but carried a different age rather than the one Obanikoro had allegedly declared.
Describing the suit  as speculative and an abuse of court processes, Obanikoro’s counsel, Ojo, asked Justice Alogba to promptly dismiss same for failure to disclose any reasonable cause of action.
The thrust of his contention was that all the documents tendered as exhibits before the court by Obanikoro’s accusers were either uncertified public documents or documents that were printed from the Internet, which authenticity  was not certified.
When the matter came up on Tuesday, counsel for the applicants, Wahab Shittu, told the court that he was prepared to move the originating summon.
But Ojo  said that  there was no need to proceed into the matter since his client had lost the PDP governorship primary.
But Justice Alogba referred him to the relief sought by the applicants in their originating summons.
The matter could, however, not go further as the counsel for both the  INEC and the PDP, Juliana Nnamdi and Samson Ozah respectively, told the court  that they had only just received the originating summons and had yet to file their replies.
They therefore asked for an adjournment to enable them file the necessary papers.
Consequently, Justice Alogba, ordered all the parties to file their  applications and then adjouned till January 14, 2015 to hear the originating summons. (Daily Independent)