The Supreme Court, on Monday, fixed March 24, 2023 to decide on the leadership crisis rocking the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
A five-member panel of the apex court adjourned to rule on a motion that was brought before it by a factional National Chairman of the party, Chief Edozie Njoku.
Njoku had in an application he filed through his team of lawyers led by Mr. Chike Onyemenam, SAN, urged the apex court to correct a typographical error in its judgement, which he said wrongly handed the leadership of the party to Chief Victor Oye.
The Applicant noted that the Supreme Court had in a letter it wrote to him on January 19, wherein it addressed him as the National Chairman of APGA, asked him to approach it by way of a motion to regularize the said judgement.
Consequently, relying on Order 8 Rule 16 of the Supreme Court Rules, Njoku re-approached the court to correct the typographical error and slip in the lead judgment of the Court in the appeal that was presided over and delivered by Justice Mary Peter-Odili (Rtd), on October 14, 2021.
He is specifically urging the apex court to correct an accidental slip at Page 13, lines 3 to 4 of its judgment, where instead of writing the name of ‘Edozie Njoku’ who was unlawfully removed from his position as the person that was validly elected as National Chairman of APGA at the convention the party held at Oweriri in 2019, mistakenly inserted the name of Victor Oye, who was not a party in the substantive suit that gave rise to the appeal.
It will be recalled that Police had earlier dragged the Appellant before a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, alleging that he forged a judgement of the apex court.
Police, in the charge marked: CR/12/2022, told the court that Njoku presented the said forged judgement as genuine, with the intention of misleading the public and ridiculing the judiciary.
He was further accused of forging the letterheaded paper of Justice Odili who had since retired from the apex court bench.
However, the factional APGA Chairman pleaded not guilty to the charge, even as he has approached the Supreme Court to exonerate himself.
(Courtesy: Vanguard)