Court dismisses suit, upholds Kantigi as PDP candidate in Niger

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Thursday, dismissed the suit filed by Idris Mohammed Sani for lacking in merit, and affirmed Liman Kantigi as the validly elected governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2023 elections in Niger State.

The presiding Judge, Justice Zainab Abubarkar, in her judgement, held that the suit failed to disclose reasonable cause of action against the defendants.

The judge said that the case was a pre-election matter, ruling that the cause of action should have crystallised 14 days after the said action.

She, however, said that the suit was filed before the conduct of the primaries.

The judge held that the plaintiff had no cause of action in the suit, hence, the jurisdiction of the court cannot be activated.

She said that the court would have assumed jurisdiction if the plaintiff had challenged the actual conduct of the poll.

Abubakar, who said that the suit was not properly instituted, declaring that it lacked merit, and dismissed the suit.

Sani sued the PDP, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Kantigi as  1st, 2nd and 3rd defendants respectively.

In the suit marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/804/2022, the plaintiff had challenged that the PDP (1st defendant) ought not to have cleared Kantigi (3rd defendant) to participate in the party’s primaries, having submitted false documents for the poll.