A Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt has nullified the candidacy of 14 House of Assembly candidates of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in Rivers State.
It is reported that the Rivers NNPP assembly candidates were sacked over “non-compliance” with the New Electoral Act 2022 in its primary election.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state had dragged the NNPP candidates before the Federal High Court seeking their disqualification.
The PDP, according to the presiding judge, Justice Turaki Muhammed, proved to the court that the NNPP did not follow the guidelines stipulated in the new Electoral Act during their party primaries.
In his judgment, Justice Muhammed directed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to stop recognizing the affected 14 persons as candidates in the election.
The latest judgment comes a few days after a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt also nullified all the primaries conducted by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State.
In the case of the Rivers APC, the Federal High Court’s judgment followed an alleged unlawful exclusion of some members of the party as delegates to the primaries.
Some aggrieved members of the Rivers APC had sued the party following their exclusion from the party’s primaries.
A claimant, George Orlu, and four others who claimed to have bought nomination forms had approached the court requesting that the primaries of the APC in the state be nullified following their alleged exclusion in the process.
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