The People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Senatorial candidate for the Kaduna Central, Lawal Adamu-Usman, has petitioned the National Judicial Council, NJC, over an alleged refusal of a judge of the Federal High Court, 1, Kaduna Division, to release the court judgment nullifying his election.
On November 2, the judge had nullified the PDP primary election that produced Mr Usman, a loyalist of the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, as the party’s candidate for the Kaduna Central senatorial district.
The judge ordered the PDP to conduct a fresh primary within 14 days after the judgement.
About two weeks after the judgement, Mr Usman petitioned the NJC, accusing the judge of deliberately refusing to transmit a copy of the judgment and records of proceedings to the Court of Appeal.
In a petition, dated November 14 and addressed to the secretary of the NJC, Mr Usman, also accused the judge of deliberately sabotaging his efforts to reclaim his mandate at the higher court by frustrating his lawyers from meeting the deadline.
“I have the honour to write to your esteem office to seek redress over the injustice meted out upon my person through deliberate act of sabotage, by the refusal to issue judgement of the federal high court, 1 Kaduna Division, which my lawyers applied for on the 4th November 2022.
‘We filed a notice of Appeal on the 4th of November 2022, challenging the judgement of the Federal High Court, delivered on the 2nd of November, 2022 in the case of Honourable Ibrahim Usman against Lawal Adamu and two others, delivered by Justice Umar Muhammad.
“Sadly we are still yet to receive the sign copy of the judgement of the federal high court, knowing fully that the notice of Appeal as well the records of proceedings at the court attached with the judgement need to be transmitted to the court of Appeal to enable my lawyers study the judgement and prepare our grounds of Appeal and brief of argument.
“Unfortunately, the judgement of the court as well as the proceedings have been heldwith by the court in order to truncate and sabotage our efforts so as not to meet the deadline,” the petition partly reads.
