Justice Okoro pointedly asked Umeh what he thought his client would benefit from the outcome of the case if not only to further overburden the court.
The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal filed by the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) challenging the nomination of Kashim Shettima as the Vice Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the last presidential election.
A seven-member panel, headed by Justice John Okoro pronounced the dismissal of the appeal after the appellant’s lawyer, Chukwuma Majukwu Umeh applied to withdraw it.
Members of the panel had, at the mention of the appeal, noted that it was frivolous because the Supreme Court had, in an earlier case of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) v. INEC and others, resolved the issue that Shettima was properly nominated.
Justice Okoro pointedly asked Umeh what he thought his client would benefit from the outcome of the case if not only to further overburden the court.
Umeh had made efforts to distinguish his client’s case from that if the PDP v. INEC and others, but later had a change of mind when the Justice Okoro insisted that the appeal lacked any utilitarian value.
The Allied Peoples Movement (APM) had asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the objections raised by President Bola Tinubu and his vice, Senator Kashim Shettima against its appeal seeking to upturn the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC)
The party claimed that the objections by Tinubu and Shetima were incompetent and frivolous in nature.
The appellant, through its lead counsel, Chukwuma-Machukwu Ume (SAN), contended that the notice of preliminary objection is not only lacking in merit but also misleading in law as it only attacked some grounds of the notice of appeal, leaving out other grounds.