On Friday 12th October, 2018, APC filed a preliminary objection challenging the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court to hear the case filed by one of the aspirants, Kunle Rasheed Adegoke (K Rad), against Osun APC primary election held on 20 July, 2018.
The ground of the preliminary objection is that the case is an internal affair of the party and that the plaintiff did not exhaust internal remedies before approaching the court. While APC’s preliminary objection was served on K Rad’s counsel on Friday 12th October, K Rad filed his argument against same on Monday 15th October as the matter would be coming up in court today 16th October.
However, aside from this preliminary objection, no defence has been filed against the substantive suit by either APC or INEC.
Counsel to APC, S. K. Kamaga urged the court to take the preliminary objection since it challenges jurisdiction. This was opposed by K Rad’s lead counsel, O J Onoja, SAN who insisted that the court must take all applications together with the substantive suit and that APC’ s counsel was only trying to waste time.
The Judge agreed with K Rad’s counsel and ruled that he would take all pending applications together with the substantive suit and adjourned the matter to Wednesday 24 October 2018 for definite hearing. The court also directed any party that might want to file any process to do so before 24 October as the matter would be heard that day.
